Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Suraiya Faroqhi is one of the most important economic and social histor-
ians of the pre-modern Ottoman empire writing today. Her scholarly
contribution to the field has been prodigious. Her latest book, Approaching
Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources, represents a summation of
that scholarship, an introduction to the state-of-the-art in Ottoman his-
tory, or as the author herself describes it, ‘a sharing’ of her own fascination
with the field. In a compelling and lucid exploration of the ways that
primary and secondary sources can be used to interpret history, the author
reaches out to students and researchers in the field and in related disciplines
to help familiarise them with these documents. By considering both
archival and narrative sources, she explains to what ends they were
prepared, encouraging her readers to adopt a critical approach to their
findings, and disabusing them of the notion that everything recorded in
official documents is necessarily accurate or even true. Her critique of the
handbook treatments of Ottoman history, quite often the sources students
rely on most frequently during their undergraduate years, provides insights
into the broader historical context. While the book is essentially a guide to
a rich and complex discipline for those about to embark upon their
research, the experienced Ottomanist can expect to find much that is new
and provocative in this candid and sophisticated interpretation of the field.
SURAIYA FAROQHI
Ludwig Maximilians Unı̈versität
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
http://www.cambridge.org
1 Introduction 1
2 Entering the field 27
3 Locating Ottoman sources 46
4 Rural life as reflected in archival sources: selected examples 82
5 European sources on Ottoman history: the travellers 110
6 On the rules of writing (and reading) Ottoman
historical works 144
7 Perceptions of empire: viewing the Ottoman Empire
through general histories 174
8 Conclusion 204
References 222
Index 251
I LL UST RA TI O N S
NOT E O N TR AN SL IT ER AT ION
Modern Turkish spelling has been used whenever the place, institu-
tion or person in question belonged to the Ottoman realm or pre-Ottoman
Anatolia, albeit in a marginal way. Only when dealing with Arab or Iranian
contexts has the EI’s transliteration been adopted; this concerns primarily
x
the names of modern archives and sections of archives. The Turkish letter (İ)
has been retained, except in personal names and geographic terms occurring
in isolation, (thus: Inalcik, Izmir). The titles of journals contain the (İ) where
appropriate.
1
INTRODUCTION
In this book I hope to share with my readers the fascination with Ottoman
sources, both archival and literary in the wider sense of the word, which
have become accessible in growing numbers during the last decade or so.
The cataloguing of the Prime Minister’s Archives in Istanbul advances
rapidly, and various instructive library catalogues have appeared, both in
Turkey and abroad. On the basis of this source material it has become
possible to question, thoroughly revise, and at times totally abandon, the
conventional images of Ottoman history which populated the secondary
literature as little as thirty years ago. We no longer regard Ottoman officials
as incapable of appreciating the complexities of urban economies, nor do we
assume that Ottoman peasants lived merely by bartering essential services
and without contact to the money economy. We have come to realise that
European trade in the Ottoman Empire, while not insignificant both from
an economic and a political point of view, was yet dwarfed by interregional
and local commerce, to say nothing of the importation of spices, drugs and
fine cottons from India.
Not that our methodological sophistication has at all times corre-
sponded to the promises held out by these new sources, far from it. But some
stimulating novelties are visible, such as the growing interface between art
history and political history of the Ottoman realm, and an awakening
interest in comparative projects shared with Indianists or Europeanists.
Many Ottomanist historians now seem less parochially fixated on their
particular speciality and willing to share the results of their research with
representatives of other fields. Paradoxically, the recent growth in the
number of available sources has led to a decline in the previously rather
notable tendency of Ottomanists to identify with ‘their’ texts and the points
of view incorporated in them. Many of us indeed have become aware of the
1
2 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
and find. Materials that nobody believed to exist even a decade or two ago
have been located, once an overriding historiographical concern has caused
scholars to look for them. As a recent example, we might mention the case
of Ottoman women’s history, even though the documents unearthed to
date still leave many important questions unanswered.1
A case could thus be made for discussing current and not so current
secondary studies before embarking on a discussion of primary sources. This
would also involve a recapitulation of the ‘basic features’ of Ottoman state
and society, on a level of abstraction more or less acceptable to social
scientists. Or else one might decide to integrate an introduction to primary
sources into a discussion of secondary research. Stephen Humphreys’ work
on Middle Eastern history of the pre-Ottoman period constitutes a particu-
larly successful example of this approach (Humphreys, revised edn 1995).
But in the present book the opposite approach has been taken, namely to
proceed from primary to secondary sources. As long as we do not pretend
that we approach our primary material ‘without preconceptions’, it seems
equally reasonable to start research into Ottoman history by examining
chronicles and sultans’ orders, coins and accounts of pious foundations. And
since the explosion of available sources during the last few decades has
constituted one of the main reasons for writing this book at all, primary
sources will form the starting point of our quest.
There is also a subjective reason for thus stressing archival records
and chronicles. Throughout my work in the archives, I have been fascinated
by the unexpected documents that will crop up, either suggesting new
answers to old questions, or more likely, leading the researcher on to a new
track altogether. This is particularly true of the eighteenth century, but any
period will offer its own lot of surprises. As a corollary, carefully elaborated
dissertation proposals may turn out to be unworkable in the archives; but
usually the researcher will find documents suggesting new approaches, not
envisaged when the proposal was written. Under such conditions, the
historian may stick to the old plan against increased odds, or else abandon
him/herself to the drift of the sources. But for the sake of mental stability, it
is good to expect the unexpected, and to regard the unpredictable as part of
our common human destiny.
From a postmodernist viewpoint, the approach taken in this book
will be considered very conservative. In Europeanist historiography, the last
twenty years or so have seen a lively debate on the very foundations of
1 For examples see Jennings (1975) and Tucker (1985). Their work, which deals with non-elite women,
would have been considered impossible forty or fifty years ago.
4 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
historical research. It has been proposed that the personal, social or political
bias of any writer trying to recover what happened in the past is overwhelm-
ingly strong. Thus it is impossible to relate the divergent stories about any
historical event to things ‘as they really happened’. As a background for this
claim, the historian of historiography may propose a number of factors: as a
new generation of scholars has emerged, economic and social history, which
formed the cutting edge of historical research in the 1960s and 1970s, was
bound to come under attack sooner or later. Moreover while social and
economic history certainly is not practised only by Marxists, this field has
traditionally attracted socialists, social-democrats and left liberals. As a result,
the revival of the Cold War in the early 1980s, economic deregulation and
globalisation, in addition to the collapse of ‘bureaucratic socialism’ in the
past decade have left this branch of study wide open to attack. And while
certain representatives of the postmodernist paradigm, such as Michel
Foucault, have shown a profound interest in history and a social concern for
the rights of deviants and handicapped people, many postmodernists were
and are specialists of literature with little interest in social phenomena. These
scholars are inclined to enlarge the field of their studies by claiming that
social conflict and stratification are of scant importance, while annexing
both primary and secondary historical sources to the mass of literary material
already within their purview. In the perspective of the more extreme
postmodernists, the distinction between primary and secondary sources is in
itself an illusion. All that remains is a corpus of texts which can refer to each
other but never to a reality outside of them (on this debate, see Evans, 1997).
However in the Ottomanist context, this fundamental debate about
the legitimacy of history has not so far left any traces. Whether this situation
should be taken as yet another sign of the immaturity of our discipline is
open to debate. If any Ottomanist historian were to claim that we should
limit ourselves to ‘stories’ without concerning ourselves overmuch with the
degree of truth they contain, doubtlessly this approach would be decried on
moral and political grounds. Let us consider an example from a different
field: extreme historical relativism makes it impossible for Europeanist
historians to counter the claims of those who, for instance, propound that
the crimes of the Nazis were invented by the latter’s opponents (Evans,
1997, pp. 241–2). In a very similar vein, many Ottomanist historians, and
that includes the present author, would be very much dismayed by the
notion that one cannot argue against the different varieties of nationalist and
other mythmaking which all too often beset our discipline. Maybe the
immaturity of our field has some hidden virtues after all . . .
INTRO DUC T ION 5
SC AN NI NG T H E HO RI Z ON: OT TO MA N A N D
EU R OPE AN HIS TO RY
The undertakings of both Ottomans and Ottomanists only make
sense when we relate them to the wider world. We will therefore begin our
tour d’horizon with the histories of different regions in which the Ottomans
were active, both inside and outside the Empire, or which seem especially
instructive for comparative purposes. Many students of Ottoman history
outside of Turkey have to some extent been trained in European history.
Some non-Turkish Ottomanists may first have turned to Ottoman materials
in order to obtain a better understanding of historical problems encountered
when studying the history of Spain, Russia or the Netherlands. Thus a
researcher dealing with sixteenth-century Dutch history may observe that
the Spanish armies attempting to conquer the country after its several
rebellions (1565–68, 1569–76, 1576–81) behaved in a rather strange man-
ner. Although they were victorious many times, Spanish commanders
typically did not follow up their victories but withdrew, and in the end, the
Spanish king lost the war. One eminent specialist has tried to explain this
enigmatic behaviour by the Spanish crown’s Mediterranean wars with the
Ottomans (Parker, 1979, pp. 22–35). Whenever the Spanish conquest of the
Netherlands appeared imminent, the Ottoman sultans, who were not par-
ticularly anxious to see all the resources of the Spanish Empire deployed
against them, stepped up the war in the Mediterranean. The Spanish crown,
whose supplies of bullion were great but not inexhaustible, saw no alterna-
tive but to draw off some of its resources from the Netherlands. As a result,
the Dutch rebels were able to maintain themselves. We may feel intrigued
enough by this thesis to explore the relations between the Ottoman and
Spanish world empires. Remarkably enough, not many scholars have done
so, and the ‘forgotten frontier’ which separated the two empires still largely
remains a terra incognita (Hess, 1978).
Another example of Ottoman history’s allowing us to place Euro-
pean developments into perspective concerns the question of royal ab-
solutism in the sixteenth century through to the early nineteenth. Conven-
tional wisdom has it that sultanic rule was different in kind from European
absolutism, if only because in the Ottoman Empire there existed no private
property in agricultural lands and no nobility controlling the countryside,
which rulers needed to subdue and pacify (Anderson. 1979, pp. 365–366).
But recent research has cast doubt on this clear-cut opposition. We have
come to understand that particularly seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
sultans operated within the constraints of a high-level bureaucracy whose
members possessed well-entrenched households. In spite of their apparent
6 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
power, these sultans were not nearly as free in their decisions as official
ideology postulated (Abou-El-Haj, 1991, p. 44). Remarkably enough,
sultanic absolutism really reached its apogee in the nineteenth century,
when several sultans sought out the support of European powers to
strengthen their rule against rebellious subjects in the capital and provinces
(Akarlı, 1988). Under these circumstances, the old question of how early
modern European absolutism and sultanic rule compared to one another can
be viewed in a new light.
At first, students with a background in European history thus may
feel challenged by questions concerning the relations between the Ottoman
Empire and the European world. But in time, emphasis may shift. Earlier
historians who studied the rich documentation of the English Levant Com-
pany or the Marseilles Chamber of Commerce were concerned with Euro-
pean establishments in Syria, Izmir or Egypt. But more recent work has
concentrated on the way in which the masses of numerical data provided by
European commercial records can be used to shed light upon the surround-
ing Ottoman society. Daniel Panzac has thus employed the documentation
on ships arriving in Marseilles from the Levant (Panzac, 1985). In the
eighteenth century such vessels were permitted to enter this port only after
presenting a certificate from the French consul resident in the locality from
which the voyage had originated. This certificate informed the authorities
of the presence or absence of plague in Izmir, Istanbul or Sayda. As a result, a
mass of data has come together in Marseilles from all the major ports of the
eastern Mediterranean, and Panzac has used this documentation to recon-
struct the course of plague epidemics.
But not only epidemic disease in the Ottoman Empire can be
studied by a close analysis of French archival records. By examining the
many shipping contracts which have survived in the archives of the former
French consulate of Alexandria (Egypt), Panzac has demonstrated that by
the middle of the eighteenth century, Muslim merchants still constituted the
vast majority of all traders freighting French ships in this port. Older
historians had believed that by this late date, Muslim merchants had long
since vanished from the scene, allowing Christians to take their places
(Panzac, 1992). Tunisian historians equally have made good use of the
Marseilles records to reconstruct the commercial history of their country,
which in the eighteenth century was still an Ottoman province (Sadok,
1987).
In a sense this use of European archives to elucidate Ottoman
history is more demanding than the conventional studies of
European–Ottoman relations, since one needs to know a great deal about
INTRO DUC T ION 7
Ottoman state and society in order to ask the right questions of Levant
Company or Chambre de Commerce records. But the results are rewarding,
as these kinds of studies allow new insights often unsuspected until quite
recently. And once the indispensable background knowledge of Ottoman
history is acquired, some students may feel that they might as well specialise
in Ottoman history pure and simple.
TH E BY ZA NT IN E–OT T OM A N TR A N SIT I ON
Western European history apart, one of the fields most closely
connected to Ottoman history is its Byzantine conterpart. The special status
of this field is in part due to the fact that Byzantine history has benefited from
the centuries-old traditions of classicism, so that a large number of the extant
sources are available in high-quality editions. Ottoman historians used to
working from manuscripts or less than reliable editions will often regard this
situation with more than a bit of envy. On the other hand, Byzantine history
in the narrow sense of the word came to an end in the fifteenth century,
while Ottoman history continued into the twentieth. As a result Ottoman
documentation, in which archival materials play a prominent role, can be
considered as a variant of early modern and modern recording practices. By
contrast Byzantine documentation, which requires the historian to deal with
large chunks of narrative history and small archives, fits well into the
‘medieval’ pattern.
But the difficulties Ottomanists and Byzantinists have experienced
in relating to one another stem less from the differences in source bases than
from the fact that the relevant fields have been ‘adopted’ by Turkish and
Greek nationalist historiography respectively. There is nothing inevitable in
this. I remember the pipedreams of a Turkish archaeologist working on
Anatolia, who once wished that Turkish republican ideology had decided to
regard Byzantine civilisation as one of the many ‘autochthonous’ civilisa-
tions which had flourished in the Anatolian homeland before the immigra-
tion of the Turks. For if that had been the case, money for Byzantinist
excavations would have been much more abundant . . . European philhel-
lenism, with its tendency to search for Byzantine ‘influence’ everywhere,
has further complicated matters. For as a defensive reaction, ever since Fuat
Köprülü’s article of 1931, Turkish historians and, in their wake, foreign
Ottomanists have tended to play down links between Byzantines and
Ottomans (Köprülü, 1931, reprint 1981).
It is only during the past twenty years or so that a certain number of
scholars have made serious efforts to circumnavigate these particular shoals.
It may not be entirely due to chance that many of the people involved have
8 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
SC AN NI NG T H E HO RI Z ON: OT TO MA N A N D A S IA N
HIS TOR Y
The study of Ottoman involvement with its Asian neighbours, as
well as comparative research into the major Asian empires, constitute
relatively new branches of historical endeavour, and researchers concerned
with them are still trying to find their feet. As long ago as 1948, Halil Inalcık
drew attention to the sixteenth-century attempts of Ottoman governments
to maintain liaison with the Central Asian khanates and impose themselves
as protectors of the Sunni pilgrims to Mecca originating from that particular
region (Inalcık, 1948). For the sixteenth century, Inalcık assumed that
Ottoman sultans and their advisers had systematically designed a ‘northern
policy’. This suggestion did not find favour with the French Central
Asianists Alexandre Benningsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, who
preferred to think in terms of ad hoc reactions to specific challenges (Ben-
ningsen and Lemercier–Quelquejay, 1976). On the other hand, the idea
that sixteenth-century Ottoman sultans developed a coherent ‘southern
policy’ has been adopted by many more scholars. From Cengiz Orhonlu to
N. R. Farooqi and Palmira Brummett, historians have pointed out that the
Ottoman struggle against the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean, the conquest
of the Mamluk sultanate, the establishment of bases on the African coasts of
the Red Sea as well as the Indian Ocean and last not least, the control of the
Hijaz and Yemen were closely linked as part of a political ‘grand design’
(Orhonlu, 1974; Farooqi, 1986; Brummett, 1994). Under Süleyman the
Magnificent (1520–66) the Ottoman state was apparently poised for the
conquest of the coastlands of the Indian Ocean. However naval units sent
against the Portuguese were lost and it proved difficult to secure long-term
control of Yemen and the coasts of western India. Ottoman statesmen then
INTRO DUC T ION 9
most part were not direct but mediated through ports in present-day India
and Indonesia. While it has long been known that many Ottoman Sultans
collected Chinese porcelain, only the recent excavations of Saraçhane/
Istanbul have demonstrated that at least by the seventeenth century, Chinese
cups had become something of an item of mass consumption in the Otto-
man capital. It has even been surmised that the decline of Iznik fayence
owed something to the competition of this Chinese import (Atasoy and
Raby, 1989, p. 285). By contrast, the mutual discovery of Ottomans and
Japanese was very much a late nineteenth and early twentieth-century
phenomenon, and thus belongs to the cultural history of the Hamidian and
particularly the Young Turkish period. Through the work of Selçuk Esen-
bel and her colleagues, we have been allowed the first glimpses of this
fascinating story (Esenbel, 1995).
While the study of Ottoman linkages to Asian empires is thus
advancing, albeit haltingly, comparative ventures are still fraught with a
great deal of difficulty. Again different source bases complicate matters.
Ottomanist historians will place a probably exaggerated emphasis upon the
archives of the Ottoman central government, while historians of the Safavid
period deal mainly with chronicles and local archives. Indianist historians,
when addressing economic concerns, have become very expert at extracting
information from Portuguese, Dutch and British archives. When dealing
with the eighteenth century, this material will be supplemented with infor-
mation derived from local and even private archives.
Images culled from diverse sources by varying methods are notori-
ously difficult to compare. But a more serious barrier results from a wide-
spread lack of information concerning ‘the other side’. Many Ottomanist or
Indianist historians have a reasonable background in European history. But
an Ottomanist with even an amateurish interest in Indian history is still a
rarity, and the same applies to Indianists knowing something of Ottoman
history. Yet even though it may still be premature to study the Ottoman
Empire in the context of Asian history, this seems promising in the long run
(Togan, 1992).
OTT OM AN S TA TE , O T T OMA N S OC I ET Y
In the 1980s, Europeanist historians and historical sociologists be-
gan to react against the historiography of the previous twenty years, during
which economic and social history had held pride of place, by Bringing the
State Back In (see Tilly, 1985). Ottomanists in due course also became
interested in this historiographical current. Only in their case, the situation
was somewhat paradoxical, as Ottomanist historiography had always been
strongly state-centred, and at first glance, there seemed to be little reason for
bringing ‘in’ what had never been ‘out’ in the first place. But here appearan-
ces are misleading, as ‘traditional’ Ottomanist state-centredness was over-
determined by the example of new-style Marxian historiography on the one
hand, and non-Marxist theories of state formation on the other. Compara-
tivists such as Perry Anderson emphasised that the locus of decisive class
struggles was always the state (Anderson, 2nd edn 1979, p.11). For Otto-
manist historians who, in Anderson’s wake, grappled with the question of
state structure in a Marxian sense, a major concern was the degree to which a
given state bureaucracy was able to operate independently from the sur-
rounding society (Haldon, 1993, pp. 140 ff.). In the European context, this
question often had been phrased differently, namely the issue had been to
what extent the state bureaucracy was independent from a landholding or
mercantile ruling class.2 Only in the Ottoman context landholding was
closely controlled by the state, so that there existed no ruling class outside of
the state apparatus, and this required a rephrasing of the problématique.
Factionalism within the Ottoman bureaucracy being highly developed, one
might usefully debate to what extent the state apparatus was independent of
or else controlled by such factions within the ruling class (Kunt, 1974;
Fleischer, 1986 pp. 159–161 and elsewhere).
Among Ottomanist historians outside the Marxian tradition and
interested in state formation, the work of Charles Tilly has held special
2
For a comparison, in these terms, between the Ottoman and Byzantine states see Haldon, 1993.
INTRO DUC T ION 13
attraction (Tilly, 1992). This is in part due to his lively polemical style and
his stress on the conflict between ordinary people and the states/ruling
classes lording it over them. For scholars striving for a new understanding of
the role of war in Ottoman politics, the major advantage is that Tilly has
placed war-making along with capital accumulation at the centre of his
theory of state formation. Moreover this historical sociologist has done
concrete work on early modern France. As a large-scale kingdom with a
ruling class strongly oriented toward the exploitation of rural society, France
before 1789 also has exerted a special attraction on Ottomanists interested in
comparative perspectives. Unfortunately, Tilly does not seem particularly
interested in the Ottoman case, emphasising as he does urban capitalism as a
variable determining the level of coercion exercised by a given state. This
concern has led him to concentrate upon intra-European history, and where
the present is concerned, on military régimes and US politics in the Third
World.
merits of the nation-state per se. In Turkey and the Arab states, some version
of Islam has served as a common ground from which historians may question
the ‘national enmities’ which seem to be an indispensable concomitant of
the nation-state. Among secularists, the fate of national minorities at the
hands of a would-be nation-state often has led to a degree of disillusionment
with nationalist ideals, and the civil war in former Yugoslavia has
strengthened this feeling.
On the positive side, historians disillusioned with the nation state
model have discovered the advantages of plural societies. For a long time,
the limited amount of interaction between different ethno-religious com-
munities, or even just populations sharing the same urban space, was
considered an irremediable defect of Ottoman society. But this evaluation
has now changed. On the one hand, recent research has shown that
intra-urban interaction was often more intensive than had been assumed
earlier (Faroqhi, 1987, pp. 157 ff.). More importantly, the willingness with
which empires such as the Ottoman down to the eighteenth century
accommodated separate and unequal communities has gained in respectabil-
ity. Or at least this is true when compared to the murderous attempts at
‘national unification’ which have been undertaken throughout the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries.
In the Turkish context, historians critical of nationalist historiogra-
phy have often aimed their darts at the presumed uniqueness of Ottoman
society, for which Turkish possesses the pretty formulation biz bize ben-
zeriz.3 Of course the claim to the uniqueness of a ‘pre-existing national
essence’ is common enough among nationalists the world around. Many of
the various state formation theories recently developed, for all their obvious
differences, aim at demonstrating the fallacy of nationalist essentialism, by
showing the contingency both of national boundaries and of the conscious-
ness associated with them (B. Anderson, 1983). Ottomanists attacking the
nationalist notion of uniqueness often do so in the name of making Ottoman
history accessible to international comparison (Berktay, 1991). For only
when we acknowledge that an empire such as the Ottoman shared signifi-
cant features with its neighbours, can we make sense of certain peculiarities
which no one would wish to deny. The existence of a peasant base,
consisting of individual peasant households running their own enterprises (as
opposed to rural labourers working landholdings managed by outsiders)
3
We resemble (no one but) ourselves.
INTRO DUC T ION 15
TH E ORIE NT AL IS T TR AP
Apart from the dubious claims resulting from nationalism, oriental-
ism constitutes the major trap into which, given prevailing cultural assump-
tions, many Ottomanist historians are likely to fall. The pervasiveness of
orientalist assumptions in secondary studies down to the present day has
been shown to us by the critical work of Edward Said and his students.
Orientalism involves a persistent tendency to define the Islamic world as the
eternal ‘other’ and an unwillingness to concede that Middle Eastern societies
have a history and dynamic of their own. In some instances, such a dynamic
may be conceded, but then it is assumed that Middle Eastern history is
something sui generis and not amenable to historical comparison. It has often
been claimed that ‘original observation’ as opposed to reliance on authority
characterised European high culture since the Renaissance. Yet orientalism
also involves an excessive reliance on literary sources from long bygone
times, so that ancient prejudices get carried over from one generation to the
next without much regard for historical realities (Said, 1978, pp. 202 ff.).
When discussing the European sources on Ottoman history, this problem
must never be left out of sight.
Many elements of the later orientalist world view were originally
formulated by seventeenth and eighteenth-century travellers, among whom
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier is probably one of the best known (Tavernier, ed.
Yérasimos, 1981). This was an enormously enterprising merchant and
jeweller, who traversed the Ottoman Empire several times on his way to
India.4 His travelogue contains a rather dubious account of what he con-
sidered ‘oriental despotism’, a concept which ever since has continued to
bedevil European political thought. But his work is still indispensible, for he
has produced an extensive account of life on the seventeenth-century
Ottoman roads which complements the work of his Ottoman contempor-
ary and fellow traveller Evliya Çelebi (Evliya Çelebi, 1896 to 1938).
Political conceptions apart, a further problem posed by European
travellers of the period is the fact that they normally had read their prede-
cessors’ work. In some instances, maybe when they had lost their own notes,
they might even piece together their accounts out of unacknowledged
quotes. This way of proceeding may cause the modern user some disagree-
able surprises: when working on Eriwan (Revan), in the seventeenth
4 He was to leave France after the toleration of the Protestants had been revoked in 1685 and die, over
eighty years old, in the attempt to reach India by way of Russia.
16 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
MOD ES OF PR OD U CT I ON A N D W ORL D S Y ST EM S
TH E ORY
Paradigms of present-day scholarship are even more difficult to
fairly describe than those of the past; as the owl of Minerva flies in the dark,
INTRO DUC T ION 17
the main lines of a paradigm usually become visible only when it is already
on the way out. However we will at least briefly refer to the role of Ottoman
studies in the discussion concerning the ‘Asian Mode of Production’ (AMP).
This Marxian concept, which in the 1960s regained relevance particularly
among French anthropologists, also found adherents among Turkish econ-
omists and social scientists (Divitçioğlu, 1967). At the same time, another
group of political intellectuals explored the possibilities of the concept of
‘feudalism’. Certain Ottoman economic historians, some of whom had also
used the AMP as a framework for their research, equally involved them-
selves with the ‘world systems’ paradigm put forward by Immanuel Waller-
stein and his school (Islamoğlu-Inan, 1987).
The debate concerning the relative merits of the ‘Asian Mode of
Production’ and ‘feudalism’ has been marred by numerous complications
and misunderstandings. Extraneous considerations of left-wing political
strategy tended to get mixed up in the debate to the great disadvantage of its
intellectual content. Apart from that, the fate of AMP in international
discussion, outside the Ottoman context, has also caused difficulties for
Ottomanists. The concept had originally gained favour as a means of
counteracting a notion of history which assumed that all societies necessarily
would have to pass through the same sequence of ‘stages’. This idea of
historical stages had been widespread in nineteenth and early twentieth-
century social theory, both within Marxism and outside of it. By assuming
that certain societies were neither ‘primitive’, ‘feudal’ nor ‘capitalist’, social
theory of a Marxian bent regained a degree of flexibility which had been lost
during the Stalinist period. However after about 1980, the AMP was sharply
attacked by many scholars as eurocentric, and as a result, most Turkish
adherents of AMP gave up or at least strongly modified their views.5
As to the ‘feudalism’ side of the debate, many participants have been
unaware that two different meanings can be attached to this particular term.
One of them is inapplicable to Ottoman history because it involves things
such as vassalage and feudal homage, which never existed in the Ottoman
world. But the other usage simply refers to a society of peasants managing
their own farms, and thus having direct access to their means of livelihood.
Such peasants, who can directly reproduce themselves with the products of
their own labour, can be made to hand over part of their produce only by
non-economic coercion (Berktay, 1985). This broad use of the term ‘feudal’
is applicable to a great many human societies of the pre-industrial age.
5 Compare Abou-El-Haj’s criticism of Anderson: Abou-El-Haj (1991), pp. 105–6; Anderson (1979),
pp. 361–94. Keyder (1987) contains an interesting development on continuity between the Byzantine,
Ottoman and early Republican periods which appears to result from the author’s previous espousal of
AMP.
18 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
Debate therefore has centred upon the question whether peasants yielding
part of their produce to a central state in the shape of taxes, and not as rent to
a feudal lord, can properly be included in the ‘feudal’ category. For the
specialist Ottomanist historian, the main advantage of this debate is probably
the stimulus it has given to comparative history.
While the ‘feudalism debate’ has during the last few years lost many
of its political implications, this does not apply to the discussion connected
with the concept of a world system, associated primarily with the name of
Immanuel Wallerstein (Wallerstein, 1974, 1980, 1989). The manner in
which the Ottoman Empire was ‘incorporated’ into a world system,
dominated by a capitalist Europe and later by the United States, continues to
be of political relevance. As a result, this linkage of Ottoman history with the
debate on world systems theory as an explanatory model continues to make
many historians uncomfortable. But from a professional point of view, the
links of certain Ottomanist historians to the Wallersteinian school also have
had very positive consequences. While Ottoman history in the past few
decades was often an arcane endeavour of little interest to anybody but its
practitioners, the debate on world systems theory has made it much easier
for Ottomanists to enter a broader historical discussion. And that should be
an appreciable advantage to students now entering the field.6
unflattering results. But an even worse thing is also ‘on the cards’ – our work
may be considered too insignificant to be worth demolishing . . .
Reflection on our activities as historians will start where the student
planning a paper or thesis normally begins. During the first stage of his/ her
work, the prospective author may have only a very vague notion of the topic
to be covered. Certain people will be fascinated with a given primary source
and decide to make it the basis of their study. Thus the correspondence of a
vizier or sultan’s mother, or else the diary of a dervish, may become the basis
for a combined historical and philological examination. The text is edited,
translated, or if that is not feasible, summarised and annotated. At a later
stage, this explicated text will serve as a means of understanding processes of
communication within the Ottoman Palace, the prerogatives of royal
women, or the process of education within a dervish convent. This type of
study is perfectly legitimate; however it involves a good deal of philology,
and many ambitious researchers prefer to look for something ‘more theor-
etical’. This will generally involve a problématique derived from current
research as reflected in the secondary literature, both Ottomanist and non-
Ottomanist. A student may recognise that Ottoman notables of the eight-
eenth century, even though they wished to govern the localities they
controlled with as little outside interference as possible, for the most part did
not attempt to set up independent states. Starting from this observation,
he/she may launch an inquiry into the mechanisms, such as tax-farming,
which integrated provincial notables into the fabric of the Ottoman state
(Salzmann, 1993). Moreover a student may first familiarise him/herself with
the problem-oriented historiography practised by the more respected repre-
sentatives of the profession today. But as a second step, he/she may decide to
return to the interpretation of a given primary source with questions derived
from sophisticated problématiques. Cemal Kafadar’s work on Ottoman diaries
and letters springs to mind in this context (Kafadar, 1989, 1992).
TI ME , SP AC E AN D TOP ICS
As an introductory volume, the present text makes no claim to
comprehensiveness. Even less do I aim to recreate the all-knowing impar-
tiality and invisibility so typical of narrators in certain nineteenth-century
novels. My own competences, and even more, blind spots, have had a
visible impact upon the composition of this book. Many more examples
come from the sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries than
from the periods before and afterward. For in my own work I have
concentrated upon this particular period, which we will often call ‘early
modern’. Where the nineteenth century is concerned, more is said about the
20 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
Tanzimat than about the Hamidian period, and more about the latter than
about the early twentieth century. I apologise to the reader on this account.
But given the enormous amounts of material which have become available
on especially the latest periods of Ottoman history, this topic should be dealt
with by a specialist on Abdülhamid II and the Young Turks.
Less of an apology is due, I think, for the focus on Istanbul and
Anatolia, and for concentration upon the Muslim rather than the non-
Muslim section of the Ottoman population. To begin with, the documenta-
tion available in Istanbul and Ankara does accord pride of place to these
groups; and I have decided to follow the drift of the sources. Yet in spite of
an abundance of source material, it would seem that Anatolia constitutes one
of the former Ottoman provinces most neglected by historians, and I hope
to contribute toward correcting this imbalance. Moreover there exists a
flourishing secondary literature on the former Arab, Greek, Serbian, Bos-
nian and Bulgarian provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the languages of the
relevant modern nations. Unfortunately I do not read any of these, and my
discussion remains confined to works in Ottoman and modern Turkish,
English, French and German. As to the historiographical discussion in Syria,
Egypt or Greece, it can be accessed only imperfectly through the more or
less rapid summaries available in western languages. After writing brief
overviews over these discussions for an earlier version of this book, I have
become aware of all the aspects closed to me because of my linguistic
limitations. I have therefore consigned my drafts to the wastepaper-basket
without too much regret.
In certain chapters or sections of chapters, a more or less limited
topic will be covered by way of example, such as rural history in chapter 4.
Hopefully, current methodological discussion of particular kinds of sources
thereby will become accessible to the non-specialist. However in chapters 2,
3 and 6 this arrangement, when first attempted, resulted in a rather artificial
text, and these chapters have been rewritten as ordinary surveys. Topics
have been selected according to my own interests and areas of competence,
and I must stress once again that there is no claim to exhaustiveness. Political
nd military history have been downplayed, obviously not because they lack
importance. But personal competence apart, I have tried to provide a
counterweight to the still rather widespread notion of the Ottoman Empire
as a perfect war machine governed by an upper class totally uninterested in
economic problems. This aim can probably not be pursued without weight-
ing the balance in the opposite direction. In any case, the rediscovery of
Ottoman political history is well underway (Har-El 1995, Hickok 1997),
INTRO DUC T ION 21
and it will not be difficult for the reader to fill in the gaps of this rather
selective account.
Two kinds of users have been envisaged for the present book. On
the one hand, there are the students of Ottoman history, and on the other,
beginning researchers or specialists in other historical disciplines who need
information on the use of a particular source category. These readers will
hopefully use the present book as a kind of map, which indicates opportuni-
ties for further research, and also, on occasion, dead ends and road blocks
best avoided. Moreover it is hoped that people involved in Middle East
survey courses, either as teachers or as students, will find some supplement-
ary readings here. The needs of these different categories of readers overlap
only to a limited degree, and some sections will seem elementary to one type
of reader and rather complicated to another. Writing two separate books for
beginning and advanced audiences would have resulted in a more unified
text in both instances. But given the relatively small number of students and
teachers concerned by our discipline, this solution would not have been
feasible from a practical point of view. Yet most chapters can stand on their
own to some extent; it is therefore possible to select individual chapters
according to current needs. In addition, the reading lists at the end of each
chapter will hopefully make life easier for the beginner. Given their brevity,
these lists cannot avoid being highly subjective, and the comments in
parentheses even more so. I trust, their usefulness to the reader will out-
weigh the critical asperities which the author will doubtlessly suffer on their
account.
life in our absorption with the documents, in which members of the ruling
groups and townsmen in general are vastly overrepresented. On the other
hand, this discussion will allow us to introduce the fifteenth- and sixteenth-
century tax registers (tahrir), arguably the best known and most intensively
studied among Ottoman primary sources.
archival documents had to cope with the literary conventions of their genre.
An Ottoman petitioner normally began his missive with a variation of ‘it is
the submission of this slave that . . .’ and ended with the phrase ‘and it is my
lord’s prerogative to command.’ Or to mention a less straightforward
example, it was common for sixteenth-century sultans’ commands to in-
clude what looked like verbatim statements on the part of complainant or
accused, people whose activities had originally motivated state officials to lay
down the law in the name of the Sultan. These ‘quotations’ were couched in
a non-literary language, probably close to actual speech. It is tempting to
regard these phrases as actual quotations, and some of them may have been
just that. But it is equally probable that these so-called quotations were
included primarily for stylistic reasons, to provide a contrast between the
rough language of mercenaries or robbers and the more or less polished
writing of the bureaucrats composing the documents. As a result, it would
be incautious to take these ‘quotations’ at face value (Veinstein, 1996).
Historical writing such as it is practised today, equally constitutes a
‘literary’ genre of its own, even though the literary talents of many historians
may be quite limited. This means that when we read secondary literature,
we also have to look for conventions of style, which limit what can
legitimately be said in a history text of a given period. When I started to read
historical secondary literature as a teenager in the late 1950s and early 1960s,
I used to think how strange it was that family relations, which in my own
experience constituted the determining factor of life, were never treated in
the history books I encountered. This was of course quite correct as an
observation; the studies I had access to at the time did not allow for the
treatment of the ‘private’ lives of ordinary people. Family studies of the kind
which are being written today, even by some Ottomanist historians, could
only be accommodated by the genre of ‘history writing’ after the rules of this
genre had been ‘bent’ somewhat (Duben, Behar, 1991). Or to give another
example of the constraining force of genre conventions, present-day pub-
lishing practices, as well as the rules of academic promotion, often oblige the
author of a manuscript presented for publication to comply with specifica-
tions made by anonymous readers. In order to get their books published,
authors may well find themselves making statements which they may
personally endorse only to a limited degree. Our critique of our contempor-
aries’ output must therefore include an appreciation of the more or less rapid
change, or else the stubborn inflexibility, of genre conventions.
24 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
7
However, scepticism about progress, while permitting us to get rid of some stultifying stereotypes, is
not without its pitfalls. Not a few Ottomanist historians have a tendency to set themselves up as
laudatores temporis acti, idealising the reign of Sultan Mehmed II, Süleyman I or Abdülhamid II.
Intellectual respectability is often maintained by emphasising normative texts, which can then be
interpreted in such a way that they appear as descriptions of actual conditions. That this idealisation of
the past is often a response to the wholesale denigration of the Middle East by Orientalists is not in
doubt; but even so, it can lead to some rather dubious historiography.
INTRO DUC T ION 25
Abou-El-Haj, Rifa’at A. (1991). Formation of the Modern State, The Ottoman Empire,
Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Albany NY: SUNY Press) (controversial,
thought-provoking).
Anderson, Benedict (1983). Imagined Communities, Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism (London, New York: Verso) (based on southeast Asian
evidence, the author explains how national communities are not natural
phenomena, but have been created by people, often in very recent periods).
Anderson, Perry (1979). Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso) (compara-
tive history in a Marxian framework).
Bayly, Christopher A. (1983). Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, North Indian society in
the age of British expansion, 1770–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press) (great ideas concerning the impact of centralisation/decentralisation on
commercial life).
Braudel, Fernand (2nd edn, 1966). La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque
de Philippe II, 2 vols. (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin) (1st edn in one volume,
1949) (More than any other, this work has placed Ottoman history on the
world historical map).
(1979)Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, 3 vols. (Paris: Armand Colin)
(fundamental for the history of trade and commercial agriculture, a ‘five-star’
book).
Esenbel, Selçuk (1995). ‘İslam Dünyasında Japon İmgesi: Abdürreşid İbrahim ve
Geç Meiji Dönemi Japonları’, Toplumsal Tarih, 19, 18–26.
Evans, Richard (1997). In Defense of History (London: Granta Books).
Haldon, John (1993). The State and the Tributary Mode of Production (London: Verso)
(comparative history, by a Marx-inspired Byzantinist).
Hess, Andrew (1978). The Forgotten Frontier, A History of the Sixteenth-century
Ibero-African Frontier (Chicago, London: Chicago University Press) (brilliant;
has unfortunately remained an isolated phenomenon).
Humphreys, R. Stephen (revised edn 1995). Islamic History, a Framework for Inquiry
(London, New York: I. B. Tauris) (focus on the mediaeval Middle East, many
ideas on research projects).
Inalcık, Halil (1969). ‘Capital Formation in the Ottoman Empire’, The Journal of
Economic History, XXIX, 1, 97–140 (a classic; one of the texts which made the
author into the major figure in Ottoman history).
İslamoğlu-Inan, Huri (1987). ‘Oriental Despotism in World System Perspective’, in
The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, ed. Huri İslamoğlu-İnan (Cam-
bridge, Paris: Cambridge University Press and Maison des Sciences de
26 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
27
28 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
HOW TO S TA RT ?
In principle, one could start any historical research by locating,
comparing and interpreting primary sources, and the organisation of this
EN T ER ING T H E F IE L D 29
book might seem to invite this procedure. But in practice, this is rather a
difficult undertaking. The relevant materials are for the most part not
available in print, and given their great number, the vast majority will
probably remain unpublished. More importantly, a text of any kind will
only make sense if it is placed in the context in which it was composed. We
cannot hope to understand the intentions of a chronicler unless we know
who he was. Or if that is not possible, we at least need to know something
about the political and social environment in which the work in question
was written. We also need to determine what literary conventions governed
composition, and who the intended addressee was. Last but not least, we
need to find out what practical purpose the author had in mind; for instance,
he may have been hunting for promotion at court by interesting a patron in
his fate. Or else he was trying to legitimise a dervish convent by linking up
this establishment with a saintly founder. For the holiness of a given dervish
lodge, if made credible by a suitable legend, was probably important for
those who solicited gifts from pious donors. Most of this information will
not be immediately obvious from the primary source in question, and we
will need to search in the secondary literature – where often enough, we will
not find satisfactory information either.
Therefore the reading of a document establishing a pious founda-
tion in Istanbul or Damascus, or of a customs register enumerating the shops
of Iskenderun, may give us an initial notion of the questions we may treat.
But usually it is more practical to begin with the secondary literature, in the
notes of which we will find references to the relevant primary sources.
There is however a danger involved in this convenient approach: an opinion
may be widespread in the secondary literature without having much of a
basis in fact. It is quite amazing what will get transmitted from one author to
another over the generations. Some errors may be just amusing, such as the
story that the heads of the Ottoman religious-cum-legal hierarchy, the
şeyhülislams, if executed, were ground to death in a gigantic mortar and
pestle (Majer, 1989). Others are more serious, and have much hampered
research, such as the inclination to explain anything and everything by
‘Ottoman decline’ (for a challenge to this tendency, see Darling, 1996, pp.
1–21). Established scholars are likely to have ingested the relevant miscon-
ceptions, so to speak, with their ‘mother’s milk’. By contrast, young re-
searchers approaching the topic with a fresh eye have a better chance of
spotting inconsistencies in the secondary literature if they first immerse
themselves in the primary sources, never mind what our contemporaries
and predecessors have said about them. There is no easy solution to this
difficulty.
30 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
I N M E D I A S R E S: WH AT PRIM A RY S OUR C ES C AN
TE LL U S
Let us assume that we have located some primary sources relevant to
the topic we wish to study; the tools suggested in the reading list will help us
here. Now we must try to make these texts intelligible to a reader living in
the late twentieth century. An example will show how this can be done.
Quite arbitrarily, we will select a list containing administered prices in 1640s
Istanbul. The prices promulgated by the Ottoman government, especially
with respect to the capital city, have intrigued scholars ever since the 1920s,
and in 1983, Mübahat Kütükoğlu edited ‘our’ price register, along with
extensive and very instructive notes (Kütükoğlu, 1983). Her introduction
gives a great deal of information on the uses to which such price lists were
put, and discusses the reasons for their promulgation: the more elaborate
registers of this kind were frequently connected with changes in the coinage.
New price lists were deemed particularly necessary in case the silver content
of the coinage was increased, so as to ensure that all tradesmen adjusted their
prices accordingly. To check whether official commands were in fact
respected, it would be useful to locate prices paid in actual sales in the
Istanbul area (this has become easier with the appearance of the series edited
by Kal¨a et al., 1997– , but merely for the eighteenth century, not for the
years around 1640 which concern us here). Only since there are no pub-
lished materials available, one would need to check the original kadi regis-
ters surviving from the relevant period. Cemal Kafadar has once surmised,
sensibly I think, that administered prices were enforced mainly when the
Ottoman Palace or other official bodies were the purchasers (Kafadar 1986,
p. 128). Or we may scour the kadi registers of provincial Ottoman towns for
price registers from approximately the same period, and we will find that
currency changes often made themselves felt in the provinces after consider-
able delay (Ergenç, 1978–9).
Anyone using Ottoman sources in print will owe a debt to Şinasi
Tekin who, at Harvard University, edits The Journal of Turkish Studies
EN T ER ING T H E F IE L D 33
(Cambridge MA). Often working together with his wife Gönül Alpay
Tekin, he has published, among other things, a facsimile edition of Evliya
Çelebi’s description of Istanbul (with Fahir Iz, 1989). In addition, Şinasi
Tekin acts as the editor of a series, in which Ottoman sources have been
published along with notes and commentaries by historians, such as Rhoads
Murphey (Murphey, 1985). A special highlight for the social historian is the
edition, by Fahir Iz, of the Saltuk-name, a fifteenth-century collection of
legends pertaining to the warrior dervish Sarı Saltuk (Ebu’l-Hayr Rumi, ed.
Iz, 1974). ˘
DE SI G N ING A P APER
After having located primary and secondary sources, we will discuss
some of the perspectives opening up in front of a person who begins to write
a research paper. As an example, we will set ourselves the topic ‘Dervish
orders (tarikat) and the Ottoman state’. As a first step, we need to decide on
what level of abstraction we want to treat the issue. Monographs covering
the Nakşbendis (van Bruinessen, 1989), Halvetis (Clayer, 1994), Bektaşis
(Faroqhi, 1981) or Mevlevis (Gölpınarlı, 1953) demonstrate that within the
unified framework of Islamic religious law (şeriat) and the administrative
practice sanctioned by the orders of the Sultans (kanun) there was scope for
considerable variation.1 We will therefore need to discuss problems of unity,
variety and variability over time, with respect to the organisation and
practice of different groups of dervishes.
Some orders, such as the Halvetis, were so closely linked to the
Ottoman state that when the latter retreated from a given territory, the
dervishes followed suit, even though a sizeable Muslim community might
remain in the area (Clayer, 1994, pp. 273–306). Something similar applied
to Mevlevis and Bektaşis, orders which rarely attracted Arab adherents.
Lodges of these orders in Syria or Egypt were thus usually frequented by
resident Ottoman Turks, more often than not associated with the state
administration. By contrast, the Mudjaddidiya branch of the Nakşbendis
was brought from India to the Ottoman Empire by şeyhs whose connections
with officialdom were not particularly strong. However, this constellation,
characteristic mainly of the eighteenth century, was to reverse itself in the
nineteenth. The Bektaşi order was closed down in 1826, allegedly because
of its links to the recently abolished janissaries. But possibly this was also
intended as a kind of test case, in order to gauge the reaction of the ulema
toward an Ottoman government confiscating pious foundations on a major
scale. At the same time, the Nakşbendis basked in the favour of Sultan
Mahmud II, and were able to take over some of the lodges taken away from
the Bektaşis. State favour or indifference might thus be an important factor
in determining the potential of a given order for expansion, but it was by no
means the only one.
When discussing the history of dervish orders during the eighteenth
or early nineteenth century, it makes sense to regard the different orders as
more or less established organisations. Individual şeyhs occasionally might
switch allegiance from one to another, and quite a few Ottoman gentlemen
became members of more than one order. But the major dervish groups
1
For a recent summary of French research on dervish orders compare Popovic and Veinstein (1996).
EN T ER ING T H E F IE L D 35
themselves could look back on stable, lengthy traditions and derive legit-
imacy from them. However, once we go back into the sixteenth century,
things are much more fluid. An early sixteenth-century text from the milieu
of Celveti dervishes shows us that the Bektaşis of that period had not yet
gathered in all the heterodox adherents which were to give them a bad name
in ulema circles during the eighteenth century (Karamustafa, 1993). This
evidence gives support to an idea first brought up by Fuat Köprülü and later
elaborated by Irène Mélikoff. These two scholars have claimed that in the
course of the great sixteenth-century persecution of real and suspected
Anatolian adherents of Shah Isma ’ı l, ruler of Iran, many people who saw
their beliefs open to challenge sought refuge in the Bektaşi order. Up to that
time, the Bektaşis had not been especially noted for heterodoxy, and the
incorporation of suspected adherents of Shah Isma ’ı l may have been re-
garded as the first step to their ultimate assimilation. But acculturation is a
two-way street, and it seems that the Bektaşis took over many of the beliefs
current among the people whom they had set out to integrate into the
Ottoman religious establishment (Köprülü, 1935; Mélikoff, 1975). If we
want to understand this process a little better, it may be worth our while to
turn to the relevant ethnological literature for guidance.
When we move yet further back, into the early period of the
Ottoman Empire, it becomes even more difficult to understand the role of
dervishes in state formation. For this period, sources are very sparse, and
elaborate interpretations therefore often have to base themselves on a few
sentences in a chronicle or foundation charter. A major step forward has
been the edition of a fourteenth-century saint’s legend, which apart from
being one of the earliest extant monuments of Anatolian Turkish, also sheds
new light on the so-called Babai uprising (Elvan Çelebi, ed. Erünsal and
Ocak, 1984, see also Ocak, 1989). At the present stage of our knowledge, it
would seem that this rebellion of Anatolian nomads against their Seljuk
overlords, put down decisively in 1240, has served as a catalyst in the
formation of Anatolian dervish orders. This is especially remarkable because,
as far as we know, the uprising may not have been mainly motivated by
religious concerns. But Hacı Bektaş, the putative founder of the Bektaşi
order, is believed to have escaped from the repression unleashed against the
defeated rebels, and the same supposedly applied to Şeyh Edebalı, who
possibly became the father-in-law of the first Ottoman Sultan. Dervish saints
may well have played a role in legitimising the Ottoman rulers when they
were still struggling to establish a principality in northwestern Anatolia. But
exactly how this happened continues to escape us.
Thus even a very brief and superficial treatment of the relationship
EN T ER ING T H E F IE L D 37
between the Ottoman state and the dervish orders flourishing on its territory
has confronted us with a complex and constantly shifting reality. We have
encountered dervishes securing newly conquered territories for the Otto-
man ruler, and major campaigns of repression whose victims were some of
the very same dervishes whom we might otherwise have regarded as pillars
of the Ottoman state. While in the fourteenth or early fifteenth century,
Sultans seem to have favoured holy men and helped along their establish-
ment in newly conquered lands, in the sixteenth century Süleyman the
Magnificent acted as the defender of Sunnism against dervishes and other
folk now perceived as heretics. All this has become apparent through a
cursory perusal of the secondary literature. This means that a student
working on the base of this material can come to formulate stimulating
questions; at a later time, they may lead up to original research.
Papers based upon secondary literature, if not intended to be purely
student exercises, should in general be more explicit about the theoretical
framework employed than is necessary in papers focusing on primary
sources. To discuss theoretical frameworks at all is something of a novelty to
many historians; among the scholars of past generations, it was usually taken
for granted that history dealt with the unique, while sociology and later
anthropology were concerned with the regularities of social and political
behaviour. Under these circumstances it was usually considered unnecessary
to discuss the framework within which the proposed topic was to be treated,
and introductions dealt with more technical matters, such as the availability
and limits of primary sources. But those scholars who would still uphold a
rigid division between history and the social sciences have decreased both in
number and influence, and many historians would today see history as a
social science rather than a part of the humanities. Albeit on a modest level
of abstraction, social theory has become relevant to historians, and scholarly
papers should, to a degree, reflect this situation.
It is therefore essential to discuss what predecessors have done, why
the secondary literature on the relevant subject is insufficient and which set
of ideas has inspired the author to ask the questions he/she is planning to
answer. Moreover, the conclusion is often a good place to discuss the extent
to which hypotheses have been proved right or wrong, and what further
studies might be in order. Here it becomes possible to tie in with the mental
framework discussed in the introduction. These procedures are not always
easy to follow. If a beginner’s work comes out sounding somewhat preten-
tious as a result of the reflections attempted, that is not in itself a terrible
thing. It is quite normal that at the beginning of one’s career, one tries to
show what one knows and why one is so much better than one’s prede-
38 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
‘DOC UM E NT -ORI E N TE D’ V ER SU S
‘ P R OB LE M - OR I EN T ED ’ S TU D I E S
Let us now draw a few broader conclusions from our attempts to
design a research project. During the early stages of twentieth-century
concern with the Ottoman Empire, many scholars wrote studies centred
around a single document or a group of documents. These involved the
transliteration of the text and often an account of the location in which it
had been found. This latter information was important at a time when many
documents had been removed from the places where they had originally
been stored, and not yet come to rest in modern-style libraries and archives.
If the study was at all extensive, the information spread out over often
numerous pages of primary sources was summarised in graphs and tables.
Later on, the information made available would be placed in the historical
context known from previous studies. This proceeding was particularly
favoured by Ömer Lütfi Barkan, who, among other things, made accessible
Ottoman foundation accounts and inheritance inventories. His major works
usually combine secondary studies with editions of texts in modern Turkish
transliterations.
But when historical research has progressed beyond a certain stage,
many historians will feel that the explication of texts cannot be their only
aim in life. Now active practitioners of Ottoman history are not very
numerous, perhaps a few hundred the world over, while especially archival
documentation is enormous. Thus historians’ dissatisfaction with ‘docu-
ment oriented’ work does not mean that ‘all’ the important source texts have
been made available, far from it. Some researchers do in fact believe that it is
not legitimate to deal with broader questions before all the relevant tax
registers, foundation accounts or whatever have been studied in their
entirety. But this is a work of many generations. If researchers were to isolate
EN T ER ING T H E F IE L D 39
the political influence of female members of the Ottoman ruling house was
either a cause or else a symptom of ‘Ottoman decline’ (Peirce, 1993). This in
turn has led to a close reading of documents such as account books pertain-
ing to the households of women of the imperial family, which previously
had been considered of marginal interest (Artan, 1993, and the same author’s
forthcoming work on Ottoman royal women).
Or else the new emphasis on women’s cultural activities (compare
the adage ‘Anonymous was a woman’ which has recently become popular
among feminist literary historians) has inspired Cemal Kafadar to interpret
the letters of a seventeenth-century female dervish from the Macedonian
town of Üsküp/Skopje (Kafadar, 1992). His sophisticated commentary on
this text would have been impossible without previous involvement in the
problématique of women’s history. Moreover, discussing a primary source
after a knowledge of the ‘state of the art’ has been acquired will also help
avoid a common failing of many exclusively ‘document-oriented’ studies:
the reader will not be left wondering why in all the world, of all the
documents which have come down to us, the author has selected this
particular text for detailed study.
carefully about the implications of the topic, and to find something else if the
prospective author has serious reservations, no matter how subjective they
may sound. It makes no sense for a person with little interest in miniature
painting as an art type to study Ottoman miniatures. There is always the
danger that such hidden reservations will result in a boring piece of work,
and in extreme cases lead to contradictions and involuntary humour in the
final text.
SU GG E ST ED RE AD ING
Türk Tarih Kurumu) (a classical example of the difficult art of editing tahrirs).
Kafadar, Cemal (1992). ‘Mütereddit bir Mutasavvıf: Üsküp’lü Asiye Hatun’un
Rüya Defteri 1641–43,’ Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi, Yıllık V, 168–222 (imaginative
introduction).
Karamustafa, Ahmet T. (1993). Vâhı̂dı̂’s Menâkıb-i Hvoca-i Cihân ve Netı̂ce-i Cân:
Critical Edition and Analysis (Cambridge MA: Harvard).
Köprülü, M. Fuad (1935). Türk Halk Edebiyatı Ansiklopedisi . . ., fasc. 1 Aba-Abdal
Musa (no more publ.) (Istanbul).
Kütükoğlu, Mübahat (1991). Osmanlı Tarihinde Usul (one of the first introductions
to our field; information on archival sources).
Kütükoğlu, Mübahat (ed.) (1983). Osmanlılarda Narh Müessesesi ve 1640 Tarihli Narh
Defteri (Istanbul: Enderun Kitabevi) (superb commentary).
Mélikoff, Irène (1975). ‘Le problème kızılbaş¸’, Turcica, VI, 49–67.
[Mustafa  ˆ li] (1979, 1982). Mustafâ ¨Â
ˆ lı̂’s Counsel for Sultans of 1581, 2 vols., ed. and
tr. by Andreas Tietze (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften)
(a famous text, made accessible).
Peirce, Leslie P. (1993). The Imperial Harem, Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman
Empire (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press) (novel and fundamen-
tal).
Popovic, Alexandre and Gilles Veinstein (eds.) (1996). Les voies d’Allah, les ordres
mystiques dans le monde musulman des origines à aujourd’hui (Paris: Fayard) (vast
overview, wide-ranging in space and time).
3
L O C A T I N G O T T O M A N SO U R C E S
MA NU SC RI P TS AN D BOOK C OL LEC T IN G
Down into the nineteenth century, when printing became more widespread
in the Ottoman realm, most books were manuscripts preserved by collec-
tors, and by copyists who manufactured additional volumes on demand.
Many books found their way into endowed libraries. These were numerous
especially in Istanbul, either as parts of larger foundations, or, particularly
since the seventeenth century, as separate institutions. Most of these manu-
script collections have now been brought together in the sixteenth-century
buildings of the Süleymaniye. In the provinces, such foundation-sponsored
libraries were much less common than in Istanbul (for a union catalogue of
Turkish manuscripts, see Collective work, 1979–). But in Konya, there
existed and still exists the famed manuscript collection of the Mevlevi
dervishes (catalogue published by Gölpınarlı, 1967–72). This library con-
tains such treasures as Elvan Çelebi’s fourteenth-century biography of the
rebel dervish Baba Ilyas, which we have already encountered (Elvan Çelebi,
ed. Erünsal and Ocak, 1984). In the İl Halk Kütüphanesi of the same city, a
number of manuscripts go back to another famed thirteenth-century collec-
tion, assembled by the mystic Sadreddin-i Konevi. This was the son-in-law
and follower of İbn ¨Arabı , one of the great figures of Islamic mysticism.
When Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror annexed Konya to the Ottoman
Empire in the mid-fifteenth century, he or some of his leading officials
apparently were much impressed by these manuscripts. Thus they were
recorded in the register of pious foundations prepared immediately after the
conquest, and the list was copied several times in the course of the next
century (Uzluk, 1958, p. 11).
But the major book collectors were not scholars or sheiks, but the
46
L OCA TI N G OTT O M AN S OURC ES 47
Sultans themselves; Mehmed the Conqueror’s activity in this field has been
studied in detail (Raby, 1980). In the sixteenth century, the Ottoman court
sponsored numerous miniatures illustrating dynastic chronicles of the time,
which have come to symbolise the Ottoman arts of the book at their most
brilliant stage. Among later rulers Ahmed III (r. 1703–1730) should be
singled out, for he had a special library constructed in the third courtyard of
the Palace, which can still be visited. But the major treasures of the Palace
library continued to be kept in the bookcases adorning the Revan Köş¸kü
and Bağdat Köş¸kü, or else in the Palace treasury itself. The building present-
ly housing the Topkapı Palace library, a sixteenth-century structure, was not
built for its present use, but as a rather unostentatious mosque. It was
converted to its present purpose only after the newly founded Republic of
Turkey had turned the Topkapı Palace into a museum (published catalogue:
Karatay, 1961).
Apart from the Süleymaniye and Topkapı Palace libraries, the
Köprülü Library has attracted scholarly attention (there exists a published
catalogue: İhsanoğlu et al, 1406/1986). Now part of the Atatürk
Kütüphanesi in the Taksim quarter of Istanbul, the Belediye Kütüphanesi is
also worth noting. This is a collection not only of books but also of archival
materials: in the upheavals of the early twentieth century, numerous books
and records were detached from their permanent repositories, and many
were undoubtedly destroyed. But some of them were picked up by private
collectors, among whom the late ˙zzet İ Koyunoğlu was probably one of the
best-known. Quite a few of these collectors turned over their treasures to
the public domain, and in Istanbul, the Belediye library was often the
beneficiary. Since the library made no purchases, what it came to possess was
the product of chance, but many materials located here are of high intrinsic
value. For books printed in Turkey, the Beyazit Devlet Kütüphanesi equally
constitutes a major resource (see İhsanoğlu et al., 1995).1
For obvious reasons, private collections deposited in publicly ac-
cessible repositories are of importance especially for the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. In this sector, it is difficult to differentiate between
libraries and archives; since the library aspect is usually very important, we
will introduce these resources here. A foundation known as the Türkiye
Ekonomik ve Sosyal Tarih Vakfı has recently been established (see also
1
Ihsanoğlu et alii, 1995 constitutes a one-volume guide to all libraries in Turkey holding manuscripts,
along with the relevant addresses, telephone numbers and short notes on the type of catalogue(s)
available. It includes histories of the more important collections as well as a bibliography of publications
on Turkish libraries. There is also a bibliography of scholarly works, both in Turkish and European
languages, on manuscripts to be found in these collections.
48 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
chapter 2). One of the foundation’s aims is the collection of publications and
private papers germane to late Ottoman social and economic history;
however the emphasis is doubtlessly on the Republican period. The foun-
dation is located in Istanbul, with branches in Ankara and Izmir. With
respect to women, a similar aim is followed by the Kadın Eserleri
Kütüphanesi (‘The Library of Women’s Works’), also located in Istanbul. In
particular, the latter is noted for its collection of the numerous women’s
journals published at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first
decade of the twentieth. Those publications which could not be acquired in
the original are at least available in reproduction.
Numerous Ottoman historical manuscripts are also found in Euro-
pean libraries. Interest in Ottoman books developed relatively late; when
sixteenth-century collectors such as the Habsburg ambassador Ogier de
Busbecq purchased books in the Ottoman Empire, they were concerned
with Greek and not with Ottoman manuscripts. In France, the alliance of
King François I (r. 1515–1547) with Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (r.
1520–1566) seems to have stimulated interest in things Ottoman. Thus the
Paris royal library, the ancestor of the Bibliothèque Nationale, began to buy
Ottoman manuscripts at an early date (Blochet, 1932–33). Both in Paris and
in Vienna, the practice of training future consular and embassy personnel to
read and write in Ottoman probably stimulated interest in Ottoman chron-
icles and historical documents. For the ‘jeunes de langue’, as they were
called in France, were prepared for practical duties, such as the conduct of
diplomatic correspondence and the translation of treaties. Historical rather
than religious texts were regarded as appropriate practice material for this
purpose. As a kind of ‘graduation thesis’ the students were often expected to
produce translations of an historical text, which were kept on file in a
library, today usually the Bibliothèque Nationale. It goes without saying
that the quality of such translations was not always of the first grade (Hitzel
ed., 1997).
Since the Germanies outside of the Habsburg lands did not possess a
capital before 1871, manuscript collecting was undertaken at a sizeable
number of princely courts. After 1871, there was a strenuous effort to
enlarge the Berlin collections, and some Ottoman manuscripts were ac-
quired in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Given this
dispersal of holdings, it is helpful that from the 1960s onward, a series of
volumes was published describing Ottoman manuscripts in (West) German
libraries (Flemming, 1968; Sohrweide, 1974 and 1981; Götz, 1968 and
1979). Of even later date is the collection of Ottoman manuscripts in
Prague, mostly purchased during the first third of the twentieth century; it is
presently being catalogued. However a catalogue of the Ottoman holdings
L OCA TI N G OTT O M AN S OURC ES 49
of the Bratislava University Library has been available for a long time
(Blaškovič, Petráček and Vesely, 1961).
Another major European library with large Ottoman holdings is the
Gazi-Husrev-Beg Library in Sarajevo. Apart from the original foundation
holdings, manuscripts donated by over 120 donors between 1537 and 1980
form part of this collection. Moreover the holdings of many smaller Islamic
foundations were concentrated here. By 1980, the library contained ap-
proximately 7,500 manuscripts, mostly in Arabic, of which slightly less than
one half had been described in two printed catalogues (Zirojevic, 1989). It
remains to be seen in what condition these volumes have survived the war
which accompanied the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
In summary, our principal guides in tracking down manuscripts
containing historical texts are the printed catalogues of major establishments
such as the Nationalbibliothek in Vienna (Flügel, 1865–67), the Gazi-
Husrev-Beg Library in Sarajevo, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris
(Blochet, 1932–33), the British Library in London (Rieu, 1881), the Bod-
leian in Oxford, apart from the Topkapı Palace Library (Karatay, 1961) and
the complex of Istanbul foundation libraries now assembled in the
Süleymaniye manuscript collection (Collective work, 1943; İhsanoğlu et al.,
1995). These catalogues will contain descriptions of the relevant manu-
scripts, which in the twentieth century have become increasingly standar-
dised. Physical characteristics such as size, number of lines, type of script,
ornamentation and details concerning the binding typically form part of
these descriptions. More importantly for our purposes, the authors of
catalogues will attempt to identify both the texts and their authors. This is
vital for the historian, as there are so few critical editions of Ottoman
writings. In addition, the ambitious cataloguer will want to explain by
whom and why the texts in question were assembled in a single volume.
Often the catalogue description also contains a list of further manuscripts,
editions and/or translations of the relevant work. However, the catalogues
of certain European collections were compiled about a 100 years ago or
even earlier, when there was less information available on authors and
manuscripts than is the case today. Later acquisitions may or may not have
been recorded in separate published catalogues, so that a letter to the
relevant library may be in order.
its incredibly rich holdings, it is also a place where both senior scholars and
novices habitually meet. First access is through a published guide (Collective
work, 1992, with a supplement of 1995). Whenever new editions of this
work become available, they should be preferred, as during the last seven
years or so, the process of cataloguing has been much accelerated. New
sections are constantly being added. Most of these are relevant to the
nineteenth century, but older periods are not neglected. Particularly the
section called Başmuhasebe Kalemi constitutes a mine of information to the
historian of the eighteenth century.
Individual sections of the Baş¸bakanlık Arş¸ivi open to researchers are
covered by special unpublished catalogues; the latter vary widely in compre-
hensiveness and accuracy of information. Some of the older ones contain
nothing but the names of the relevant subsections, the call numbers of the
documents contained therein and the years in which these documents were
written. But even in many of the more recent catalogues, the documents,
both registers (defter) and individual documents (evrak) are organised by years
only, with no index to speed up the work. In certain catalogues however,
indices have been included.
A book of its own would be necessary to discuss even the more
important sections of this enormously rich archive. The history of archival
divisions of course reflects the history of both republican Turkish and
Ottoman administration. But that is a vast field which cannot be covered in
an introductory text. Thus the few examples given here should merely whet
the appetite.
Even in the recent past, the extremely comprehensive section
known as Maliyeden Müdevver was the bane of researchers. The only
available catalogue consisted of file cards written in pencil in an all but
illegible rik¨a script. A series of bound volumes in Latin typescript has now
replaced them. Most scholars studying the sixteenth century will spend
much of their time working their way through the Mühimme Defterleri.
These comprise copies of the outgoing correspondence of the Sultan’s
Council (Divan-ı humayun), addressed mainly to provincial governors and
judges (kadis), but also to foreign princes. For most of the sixteenth century,
the Mühimme catalogues contain summaries of individual documents. But
when dealing with later periods, the researcher must be prepared to go
through the registers rescript by rescript. Recently several sample registers
have been published in facsimile, among them nos. 3, 5 and 12 (Binark et al.
eds., 1993; 1994; 1996), relating to the years 1558 to 1572, no. 44
(1580–1584, ed. Ünal, 1995) and no. 90, which covers the year 1056/
1646–47 (Tulum et al. eds., 1993). To protect those often-used registers,
L OCA TI N G OTT O M AN S OURC ES 51
most researchers will be given photostats rather than the originals to work
with.
From the mid-seventeenth century onward, specialised registers
were progressively created, so that the main registers became less and less
comprehensive. First the responses to complaints handed in by low-level
administrators and ordinary taxpayers were entered into a special series, the
so-called Şikâyet Defterleri. From the mid-eighteenth century onwards,
separate registers were set up for the more important provinces, known as
the Vilayet Ahkâm Defterleri. However the original series continued well
into the nineteenth century, and since very few scholars have studied the
later registers, they may well contain unknown treasures (for surviving
volumes check Collective work, 1992).
Other series which researchers concerned with the early modern
period will want to consult are the taxfarming records (Mukata¨a Defterleri).
These records can be found not only in the more comprehensive sections
such as Maliyeden Müdevver and Kamil Kepeci, but also in specialised ones
such as the Bursa Mukata¨ası Kalemi, which, as the name suggests, deals with
the city of Bursa and the tax farms attached to it. These materials often are
not registers, but rather individual documents all related to a single tax farm
and bundled together. Considerable ingenuity is needed if the data found in
tax-farming documents are meant to serve as the raw material for a study in
economic history. However, work by Halil Sahillioğlu (1962–63), Mehmet
Genç (1975, 1987), Murat Çızakça (1985), Ariel Salzmann (1995) and Neş¸e
Erim (1991) has demonstrated the enormous potential of these records.
Procedures of document production changed after the great reor-
ganisation of the Ottoman bureaucracy between the 1840s and 1870s
known as the Tanzimat. Old series were revamped and new ones were
instituted, and the amount of documentation produced increased vastly.
Again only a very small sampling of the available series can be introduced
here. In certain sectors, continuity with earlier times predominated, at least
for a while. For those provinces with Christian and Jewish inhabitants which
still remained within the Ottoman Empire, the capitation (cizye) registers
were continued between 1838 and 1857. But these later registers were
placed in a special section, while older cizye registers are most often found in
Maliyeden müdevver. Another series continuing older bureaucratic practice
under a different name was the İrade, which in the pre-Tanzimat period had
been known as the Hatt-ı humayun. These two terms refer to sultanic
commands which down to 1832, the ruler added in his own hand onto a
paper on which the Grand Vizier had previously explained the facts of the
case. After that date, these summaries were addressed no longer to the ruler
52 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
himself but to his Chief Scribe, who orally explained the relevant cases to
the Sultan and took down the latter’s – equally oral – comments. This
practice continued down to 1908; after that time, the Sultan as a constitu-
tional ruler merely confirmed the decisions of his Council of Ministers.
The İrade section is organised by at least three different principles,
which may oblige the user working on a single topic to check a variety of
subdivisions. To begin with, there is a division by time, the cut-off date
being 1309/1891–92. Within this temporal division we find a second one
according to the ministry or council concerned by a given Sultan’s order.
This ministry or council probably had prepared the documentation and
solicited the ruler’s decision in the first place. Secondly, irades in the form of
files are separated from those which, according to previous practice, were
written on individual sheets; incidentally this differentiation between docu-
ments on single sheets (evrak) and registers (defter) is a fundamental organising
principle of the entire Prime Minister’s Archive, including the older sec-
tions. In accordance with a third organising principle, provinces which
constituted ‘problem areas’, such as Egypt, Crete, or the Lebanon Mount
were assembled in special sections. All this may sound complicated. But the
fairly detailed lists in the published guide, on which the present explanations
are based, and supplementary information in the unpublished catalogues
should make consultation easier. Moreover, the published guide also con-
tains flow charts which show the way that files took between different
government bodies during various periods of the nineteenth century. These
charts should be of help when determining which information to expect in
which section of the archives. But even so, the advice of an experienced
researcher or archive official may often be the surest guide.
We will continue our rapid overview with a series of special interest
to the social and economic historian of the nineteenth century, namely the
Temettuât Defterleri (Collective work, 1992b, pp. 281ff.). In 1844–45 a tax
on profits was instituted, and as a base for this new type of taxation, an
overall count of taxpayers was made in certain selected provinces of the
eastern Balkans and western as well as central Anatolia. The results were
recorded in 17,747 registers, which provide valuable information on both
movable property and real estate. Few scholars have as yet made use of this
fascinating series. During the Tanzimat years, certain novel authorities were
also created, usually on the basis of older bureaus. Among these the minis-
tries of War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs are of special importance, and
excepting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ministry records are also located in
the Başbakanlık archives.
But one of the most important divisions for historians dealing with
L OCA TI N G OTT O M AN S OURC ES 53
the later nineteenth century are surely the Yıldız Archives, named after the
palace which Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909) built for himself on a hill
overlooking Beşiktaş, and from which he conducted governmental business
(Collective work, 1992b, pp. 366–73). Because of this practice, the Yıldız
section contains records such as the minutes of the Council of Ministers
(Meclis-i Vükela Mazbataları), which one would not ordinarily expect in a
palace archive. An especially rich series (15,679 registers) comprises the
Yıldız Petition Registers (Yıldız Maruzat Defterleri). Here we find the re-
quests submitted to Sultan Abdülhamid II throughout his long reign, which
in 1992, had been catalogued down to the year 1904. Another important
section is known as Yıldız Esas Evrakı, which contains documentation on
affairs with which the ruler occupied himself without necessarily involving a
government office. Another set of series specific to this period, also found in
the Yıldız collection, emanates from the so-called inspectorate of Rumelia,
instituted from 1902 onward upon Austrian and Russian pressure. This
material is indispensible for researchers concerning themselves with the
wars, uprisings and negotiations which accompanied the last decades of the
Ottoman Empire.
TH E TOP KA P I PAL A C E AR C HI V ES
After the middle of the nineteenth century the famous Topkapı
Sarayı was not used as the main residence of the court. Therefore the archive
of this palace is largely concerned with the pre-Tanzimat period. It is again
divided up into a section which consists of individual papers, and a second
one containing registers. Moreover, the archive is quite separate from the
Topkapı Palace Library, located in the same compound, which has been
briefly introduced above (Collective work, 1938–40). The Topkapı Sarayı
archives concentrate on materials connected with the functioning of the
palace, particularly its extensive kitchens, which on certain days needed to
feed thousands of people. But there is a lot of overlap with the Prime
Minister’s Archive. On the one hand, documents concerning the operation
of the Palace kitchen are also found in the central archive. On the other
hand, quite a few accounts pertaining to pious foundations have found their
way into the Topkapı Sarayı archives, even though one would normally
expect them in the Maliyeden Müdevver series of the central archives
instead.
One of the richest holdings of the Topkapı Palace consists of the
Sultan’s correspondence with the khanate of Crimea. From 1475 onward,
this relic of the once powerful Golden Horde was a vassal principality of the
Ottoman Empire. While the khans were appointed by the authorities in
54 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
Istanbul, the Sultans were obliged to choose them from among the members
of the ruling Giray family. Since documentation concerning the khanate is
sparse, the texts in the Topkapı Palace archive are of special value. They
have been made accessible by a published guide with an ample index, which
also contains reproductions of a few dozen documents (Benningsen et al.,
1978).
In addition there exists a catalogue which was meant to cover the
holdings of the Topkapı Sarayı Archive in its entirety. Two fascicules were
published in 1938 and 1940 respectively; but this work has not proceeded
beyond the letter ‘H’ (Collective work, 1938–40). The publication in
question consists of indices of proper names along with the call numbers of
the documents in which the relevant personages occur. In addition, there
are some sample documents published in facsimile, with descriptions. Two
fascicles of a catalogue encompassing sultanic commands are also available
(Uzunçarş¸ılı et al., 1985–86). However most of the documents still have to
be located through unpublished catalogues. Unfortunately these repertories
but rarely indicate whether the document being sought is in a good enough
state of preservation to be shown to researchers (by contrast, some of the
catalogues of the Baş¸bakanlık Arşivi do provide this information). A fund of
patience and good humour is therefore essential.
TH E TA PU VE K AD AS T R O A N D VA K I F LA R
AR CH I VE S
The first-named archive is attached to the General Directorate for
the Cadastre, located in downtown Ankara. Primarily the Tapu ve Kadastro
archive is meant to serve as a source of information in land disputes, and
there is no published catalogue; historians are however admitted. Apart from
a sizeable number of foundation deeds (vakıfname, vakfiye), this archive
contains a remarkable collection of tax and foundation registers. Apart from
the register of central Anatolian foundations prepared for Mehmed the
Conqueror, which we have already encountered, this archive contains some
priceless foundation registers documenting middle and late sixteenth cen-
tury Istanbul (one of them published by Barkan and Ayverdi, 1970).
But the main reason for mentioning the Tapu ve Kadastro archive is
the fact that it holds the entire series of tax registers prepared under Sultan
Murad III (r. 1575–1595). These registers contain lists of settlements,
taxpayers and taxes, and form the basis for any study of the socio-economic
structure of sixteenth-century Ottoman society (see chapter 4). The docu-
ments in the Tapu ve Kadastro archives constitute the last series of registers
covering, at least in intention, the entire Ottoman Empire. 1584 seems to
L OCA TI N G OTT O M AN S OURC ES 55
have been a target date at least where central Anatolia is concerned; for this is
the year very often mentioned in the prefaces. For certain parts of eastern
Anatolia, no other registers have been preserved. However such single items
are of limited utility, as scholars who have gained experience with Ottoman
tax registers stress the need never to consult a individual text on its own.
Wherever possible, the entire group of registers pertaining to a given region
must be compared and analysed (Lowry, 1992). A researcher planning a
study of a given sixteenth-century province thus should make sure to pay a
visit to the Tapu ve Kadastro archive.
The archives of the Administration of Pious Foundations equally
serve primarily the official body to which they are linked. Yet they also
constitute a major resource for researchers dealing with pious foundations.
Of particular value are the nineteenth-century certified copies (hüccet) of
foundation documents, of which this archive possesses a large number. For
many of the originals were in the hands of private persons, and given the
vicissitudes of the last 100 years, often have not been preserved. Of course
these copies may contain misreadings, particularly where older obsolete
place names are concerned. But even problematic copies are better than no
evidence at all. . .
TH E K ADI R EGI S TE R S
Apart from the Prime Minister’s archives, the thousands of surviv-
ing kadi registers (kadı sicilleri, sicil) should be regarded as the major resource
for the Ottoman historian. They are found on Turkish territory, but also in
other Ottoman successor states such as Greece, Macedonia, Jordan, Syria
and Egypt. Those preserved in Turkey are now, apart from the major
exception of the Istanbul registers and a few minor ones, located in the
National Library (Milli Kütüphane) in Ankara. Istanbul’s registers can be
consulted in the office of the Chief Islamic Jurisconsult (Müftülük) in the
Süleymaniye quarter of Istanbul. A published guide is available, the newest
version of which allows the prospective user to determine the years covered
by each register in addition to the call number (Akgündüz et al., 1988–89).
Moreover this guide contains a selection of reproduced documents. Many
users claim that they find the scripts used in the kadi registers fairly easy to
read; but of course there are variations from one volume to another.
Kadi registers of the larger cities will consist of two parts. One
section begins where books written in the Arabic script normally begin,
namely at what is, to us, the last page of the volume in question. A second
section will then begin at what to the scribes was the last section of the
register, and which we regard as the first. Starting from the end of the
56 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
volume we find transactions notarised in the local court, such as sales, loans,
agreements concerning divorces or manumissions of slaves. These transac-
tions were not contentious and the parties involved had them recorded so
that proof of the sale, divorce or manumission should be easily available.
This purpose explains why we normally find the names of three, four or five
witnesses under the relevant text (ş¸ühud ül-hal), who could be called upon as
need arose. In addition, the kadi registers documented cases of litigation,
which might concern the division of an inheritance, but also any number of
miscellaneous complaints (for a broad selection of published documents
from the mid-eighteenth-century Istanbul registers, see Kal¨a et al., 1997– ).
More serious matters such as rape, robbery and murder are also
recorded, but not very frequently. Islamic religious law (ş¸eriat) regarded
murder without robbery as something which, to a major extent, concerned
the family of the victim, and on the other hand, the Ottoman state de-
manded monetary penalties and particularly a share of the blood money
(öş¸r-i diyet). Thus there was some incentive to settle out of court. Many cases
which by our categories would be regarded as penal simply contain the ‘facts
of the case’ as established by the witnesses’ depositions. Presumably the case
was then referred to the Sultan’s Council in Istanbul. But after having been
seized of such an affair, the Council, according to the evidence of the
Mühimme and ޸ikâyet Registers, in most cases merely issued an order to the
relevant kadi to judge the matter according to the ¸eriat. ş Therefore in most
cases, neither one nor the other source will inform us of the judgments
issued and the manner of their execution.
The other half of the registers was taken up with orders issued by
the Sultan’s Council. Some of these were addressed to a large number of
kadis and provincial authorities; they were sometimes distributed empire-
wide, sometimes merely over a given region. Other sultanic commands
were concerned with matters specifically assigned to a particular kadi and/or
governor. These included responses to complaints by local inhabitants, such
as creditors unable to recover loans.
Occasionally a rescript may occur both in the Registers of Import-
ant Affairs and in the local kadi registers. But that is fairly rare, as both the
registers of the kadis and the records prepared in Istanbul have not survived
in their totality. In addition, we cannot be sure how great was the percen-
tage of documents which for one reason or another, escaped registration at
either the central or the local end of the bureaucratic process.
In the largest cities, such as Bursa or Cairo, there were also separate
registers for inheritance inventories (muhallefat, tereke). By this term we mean
a list of the goods left by the deceased, including both movable property and
L OCA TI N G OTT O M AN S OURC ES 57
real estate. Debts and money owed to the deceased were also included, as
well as provisos concerning the testament of the man or woman in question,
especially where the status of slaves to be liberated was involved. In Edirne
and Istanbul, there were special registers covering the askeri, that is the
servitors of the Sultans whose inheritances were liable to confiscation.
However, these registers were not the responsibilty of the kadi but of a
special official known as the askeri kassam.
In cases where no children or absent people were involved, the
heirs could divide up the inheritance without recourse to the kadi and
consequently without the compilation of an inheritance inventory. This
means that only a relatively small share of all inheritance cases was recorded.
Merchants were probably overrepresented among the surviving records, as
they were likely to possess substantial fortunes and often died while away
from home. By the same token, women and the poor were underrep-
resented. When the inheritance was small, it was to the advantage of all heirs
to avoid reducing it further by paying the fees charged by the kadi’s court. In
addition, the frequency of inheritance disputes shows that manipulations to
disinherit minors and women were common. Whenever the inventory does
not explicitly say that the estate was sold by public auction, the prices
assigned to individual goods in the register also should be regarded with a
degree of scepticism. Used goods are notoriously difficult to value, even
with the best of intentions.
The kadi’s registers must have been kept in the court building of the
district centre, and this explains why the registers did not before the late
twentieth century find their way into a central deposit. It was the respon-
sibility of the outgoing kadi to hand the registers accumulated in his office
over to his successor. Occasionally we hear of kadis who did not do this, due
to accidents or because they had something to hide. No Ottoman court
buildings older than the mid nineteenth century have survived. But docu-
mentary and narrative sources show that by the seventeenth century they
existed at least in the larger towns. Presumably an Ottoman court building
more or less resembled the residence of a well-to-do family, with habitations
surrounding two courtyards. In the first, corresponding to the men’s part of
a house (selamlık), the business of the court must have been transacted, while
the family dwelt in the second courtyard. Outgoing kadis presumably
moved out to make room for their successors (compare the article ‘Sidjill’ in
EI, 2nd edn).
58 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
P RI V A T E AR CH I V E S
These may belong to persons or to non-governmental institutions
such as dervish convents (zaviyes, tekkes). In Turkey, private archives with
large numbers of pre-nineteenth-century documents are relatively rare, due
largely to the wars and civil wars attendant upon the dissolution of the
Ottoman Empire. But things were different in Syria; the city of Damascus
holds substantial private archives down to the present day (Deguilhem, 1991
is partly based upon materials in private hands).
Zaviye archives were especially vulnerable when in 1826, Sultan
Mahmud II closed down the janissary corps and in its wake, the Bektaşi
order of dervishes as well. This was accompanied by the sale of the zaviyes’
lands and the destruction of much movable property. Many collections of
appointment documents (berat), which all zaviye sheiks needed in order to
maintain themselves in office, disappeared during the turmoil (Faroqhi,
1981, pp. 107–28). A century later, in 1925, all dervish convents in the
Republic of Turkey were closed down, and some of their movable property
ended up in museums. But the dervishes’ archives were mostly dispersed,
with one major exception, namely the central tekke of the Mevlevis in
Konya (Gölpınarlı, 1955–56). This collection has been described by the
former Mevlevi Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı, who during his long life developed
into a major specialist on Ottoman religious history. Moreover the archives
of a small but ancient zaviye, known as Emirci Sultan and located in the
vicinity of Çorum, have survived the upheavals of twentieth-century
Anatolian history. They have been studied by Ahmet Yaş¸ar Ocak (Ocak,
1978). Scholars working on the later nineteenth century will probably have
somewhat better luck in locating private collections of documents.
from 1651 to 1900. This collection includes kadi registers from Temeşvar
(Timiş¸oara) in modern Roumania, which passed out of Ottoman hands in
1718. Some family archives also have found their way into the same
institution, in addition to 1,762 manuscripts; these include some Slavic texts
written in the Arabic script. In many instances, the distinction between
library and archival materials is quite fluid.
In Sofia, Ottoman holdings are concentrated in the Oriental section
of the Cyril and Methodius National Library. Kadi registers of Sofia, Vidin
and Ruse (Ottoman Rusçuk) can be found here. These registers begin in the
seventeenth century and seem to get much fuller in the eighteenth. Unfor-
tunately the oldest register of Sofia, dating from 1550, disappeared during
World War II (Duda, Galabov, 1960). It can still be consulted in a volume of
summaries prepared by Galab Galabov and Heribert Duda during the war
years, but published only in 1960. In addition, the National Library holds
seventeenth-century records concerning the delivery of live sheep for the
consumption of Istanbul (Cvetkova, 1976). For the nineteenth century,
documents become more numerous; social and economic historians will
note a large number of rulings connected with artisans.
Some provincial Bulgarian towns also contain important archives.
Memorable are a few parish registers dating from the 1830s and located
mainly in the City and District Archives of Plovdiv, but also in the National
Historical Museum in Sofia. In one case, such registers are even found in the
archive of the parish church for which they were first compiled (Todorova,
1993). These volumes concern Catholic parishes whose priests recorded
baptisms, marriages and funerals according to the norms standard in the
Roman Catholic church after the council of Trent. As such registers were
not widespread in the Orthodox church, these few volumes have become a
major source for the historical demography of the Ottoman provinces
which a few decades later, were to form the kingdom of Bulgaria.
In the Arab countries, the two major treasurehouses of Ottoman
documents are Cairo and Damascus. In Cairo the documentation for the
Ottoman period (which we will assume to have ended with the British
occupation of 1882) is especially ample. As early as 1930, Jean Deny
published an inventory of the Ottoman documents accessible at that time
(Deny, 1930). Since then, the history of Ottoman Cairo has all but devel-
oped into a separate discipline. Again the kadi registers constitute the
historian’s principal resource. They are located in the archives of the
Mahkama al-shar¨iyya, which in 1956 changed its name to Mahkama
˙ ˙
li©-l-ahwa l al- shakhsiyya (Tribunal concerning Matters of Personal Status).
˙ ˙
Unfortunately, very few registers survive for the sixteenth century, and
60 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
MA JOR AR CHI V ES OU T S I D E O F TH E F O RM E R
OTT OM AN T E RR I TOR I E S: T H E C A SE OF F RA NC E
The Ottoman documents to be considered here may have arrived
in France (or Venice, or the Netherlands) in the normal course of business;
this applies to the letters Ottoman Sultans sent to foreign rulers. Or else
documents may have been captured in wartime, or purchased by collectors
and ultimately turned over to some public repository (for an example
concerning the Germanies: Babinger, 1931). In the latter case, the docu-
ments in question were often esteemed for their artistic decoration rather
than for their contents, and thus wound up not in archives but in museums.
In addition, documents composed by Frenchmen or other non-Ottomans
may provide vital information on Ottoman subjects who came to France or
some other European country as visitors or prisoners of war, remained as
long-term residents or even made the foreign country in question their
permanent home (Eldem, 1999). Since a great many archives, libraries and
museums hold documents falling into one or another of these categories,
only a selection can be introduced here.
To the economic historian of the Ottoman Empire, the archives of
the Marseilles Chambre de Commerce constitute one of the major docu-
ment collections available, with supplementary information to be gained in
the Archives du Port de Toulon (Panzac, 1985, pp. 521–4; Panzac, 1996a, p.
58). At certain times French shippers carrying goods for Ottoman merchants
both Muslim and non-Muslim were encouraged to deposit their freight
contracts with the relevant consular authorities. Thus two registers from
Toulon provide a unique reflection of French and Ottoman Mediterranean
commerce in the later eighteenth century. The importance of the much
larger Marseilles archives for the history of French commerce in the eastern
Mediterranean has been known for over a century (Masson, 1896). Consu-
lar correspondence preserved in Marseilles, preserved due to the semi-
official role devolving on the Chambre de Commerce, refers to the condi-
tions under which French traders operated. But even more revealing is the
Fonds Roux, the archive of an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Mar-
seilles firm with numerous correspondents in Istanbul, Izmir and other
62 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
Ottoman cities. Moreover, the registers of ships entering the port of Mar-
seilles, located in the departmental archives of Bouches-de-Rhone, for the
eighteenth century provide valuable information on the presence or absence
of plague in the ports shippers had visited. Particularly after the catastrophic
epidemic which hit Marseilles and Provence in 1720, these registers were
kept with scrupulous care.
Only those places in which French merchants resided on a long-
term basis are documented in the Chambre de Commerce records. Apart
from Aleppo, these were mainly port towns. Izmir has generated a major
amount of documentation, all the more precious as due to wars and
earthquakes, little survives in situ. Istanbul was a city where Frenchmen sold
a great deal, often valuable goods of superior quality. Salonica emerged in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a centre of French trade
(Svoronos, 1956). Ottoman Crete was visited by Provençal shippers inter-
ested in the country’s olive crop (Sabatier, 1976). Among the Syrian ports
Sayda was usually the most frequented, except for a period in the late
eighteenth century when a local magnate by the name of Cezzar Ahmed
Pasha succeeded in rerouting traffic through his port of Acre. As to the
Ottoman provinces on the African continent, Alexandria was frequented by
French traders doing business with Cairo. From the late sixteenth century
and especially from the seventeenth, Tunis also attracted a contingent of
Frenchmen, who traded in coral and the abundant olive crop of the Sahel
area (Sadok, 1987).
The archives of the Chambre de Commerce have been used exten-
sively by a group of distinguished French historians who in the 1950s,
brought out a collective work on the history of the trade of Marseilles
(Rambert ed., 1951–57). For our purposes, mainly vols. 3–5 are relevant.
Throughout, the authors have documented the quantities of goods traded in
the port and the changing priorities of local traders. In that sense this massive
and detailed study is a work of economic history, with a quantitative slant.
But even so, the French economic historians of the 1950s were not con-
cerned with the Ottoman Empire per se. Sayda, Izmir or Salonica were not
treated as commercial centres in their own right, but simply as sites on which
Marseilles merchants did their buying and selling. By contrast Daniel Panzac
has pioneered the use of French archival materials for the study of Ottoman
social and economic history: plague, caravan routes and the continuing
commercial activity of eighteenth-century Muslim Egyptians form part of
his agenda (Panzac, 1985, 1992, 1996 ).
In Paris and Nantes, the Archives Nationales and the Archives des
L OCA TI N G OTT O M AN S OURC ES 63
man territory on the one hand, and their commercial principals and govern-
ment on the other (1896; 1911). Even today, by no means everything of
interest has been said about European expatriates living in seventeenth-
century Istanbul or Izmir. Daniel Goffman has discussed the manner in
which the English Civil War was fought out on Ottoman soil (Goffman,
1998). Kemal Beydilli has shown that Ottoman archives contain consider-
able evidence on the repercussions of the French Revolution upon the
Istanbul diplomatic community (Beydilli, 1984).
French consular reports of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries are of particular interest, as their authors’ families were stationed
on Ottoman territory over several generations and often able to establish
close local contacts. Young men getting ready to step into their fathers’
shoes were sent to France for a period of study, an arrangement which also
ensured that they did not completely blend into local society. Upon return
they would be awarded a vacant consular position. Among the consuls
whose writing is especially valuable to the historian we find the Peysonnels,
father and son, frequently the guests of one or another member of the Izmir
magnate family known as the Karaosmanoğulları (Veinstein, 1975). In the
early nineteenth century, Aleppo was the scene of the activities of Consul
Rousseau, a relative of the philosopher, whose instructive reports on the
eastern trade of this city have been analysed (Wirth, 1986).
I N TR O D U C I N G P A L AE O G RA P H Y A N D
DI PL OMA TI C S
The formal study of palaeography may be regarded as a kind of
paradox. On the one hand, Ottoman archival studies are impossible without
a good knowledge of the relevant scripts, and their apprenticeship is a major
ingredient in the training of a novice researcher. At the same time, however,
nobody has learned palaeography entirely from books. University courses
and the private study of published documents are of great value, as they save
time when on the spot. However, texts and courses provide no more than a
general introduction, and once in the archive, the historian will have to
accustom him/herself to the particular documents needed for his/her work.
Every type of record and sometimes every individual document has its own
special characteristics, so that even the most experienced researchers may fail
to read a particular word or phrase. Often it is not so much palaeography, as
the knowledge of what is normally said in a given type of document, which
provides the solution to the modern reader’s difficulty. Therefore the study
of the formal structure of documents (diplomatics) is closely linked to that of
palaeography. In the end, experience is the crucial factor.
Introducing a few scholars who have studied the formal characteris-
tics of Ottoman documents, we will begin with a brief glance at calligraphy.
The aesthetic aspect of writing, characteristic of the more elaborate among
Ottoman documents, needs special emphasis. Calligraphy has not been a
highly developed art in post-Gutenberg Europe. Therefore, most twenti-
eth-century scholars need to make an intellectual effort to appreciate certain
Ottoman documents as works of art – which was what they were originally
meant to be. The calligrapher’s art begins with his/her writing materials.
Thus it comes as no surprise that Süheyl Ünver, one of the best connoisseurs
of this art in republican Turkey, should have devoted special attention to
paper, watermarks, ink and pens (Ünver, 1960, 1962). Similar matters have
equally loomed large in the work of Uğur Derman, who has also written on
the aesthetics of script in the narrow sense of the word (for example
Derman, 1988).
Numerous are the scholars who have dealt with the structure of
Ottoman documents and the modalities of their production. We will begin
with a few studies by Ismail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Carter Findley and Halil
Inalcık. In 1941 Uzunçarş¸ılı published a major article on the tuğra of the
Ottoman Sultans and the tuğra-like signature used by viziers, known as the
pençe (‘claw’). In the same year he also studied the official orders issued by
viziers and known as buyuruldu (‘it has been ordered’) (Uzunçarş¸ılı, 1941a
and b). But his major contribution probably lies not so much in the study of
L OCA TI N G OTT O M AN S OURC ES 71
ated in the Abbasid and Mamluk chanceries, and the scribes working in
these institutions in turn seem to have been at least indirectly acquainted
with the scribal traditions of late antiquity. Since mediaeval European
documents were composed according to models inherited from the same
tradition, some similarities go back to a common source. Moreover, the
mere purpose of a royal edict may lead to similar forms of expression even if
there exist no shared traditions. But Fekete introduced a distinction be-
tween documents concerning ‘religious matters’ and those relevant to
‘secular affairs’, which makes sense in the context of mediaeval Europe, but
much less so in the Ottoman tradition. This categorisation has been
criticised by later scholars. But otherwise Fekete’s work has been enormous-
ly influential. In the books of later authors on the same theme, the intellec-
tual debt to Fekete, particularly where the outline is concerned, is often
dramatically obvious.
Fekete’s work dominated the field until well after World War II;
the useful introduction to palaeography by Mahmud Yazır, published in
1942, does not deal with diplomatics at all (Yazır, 1942). In 1955, Fekete
produced another, more specialised work on Ottoman palaeography. In the
meantime, he had worked in the Ottoman archives and become acquainted
with the intricacies of the script called siyakat (Fekete, 1955). This was used
by the Ottoman financial administration down into and beyond the eight-
eenth century. Figures were written not in Arabic numerals but in
graphemes derived from the same numbers written out in Arabic words.
Because of the abridgements involved, the numerals could no longer be read
as words, but had to be memorised as separate entities; understandably, these
numerals were not employed in arithmetical operations. Ordinary sentences
were written in such a way as to resemble the numerals; they could be read
only by people with some prior knowledge of the contents of the document
to be deciphered. This script was used to keep the information contained in
the relevant documents secret, besides strengthening group consciousness
among the limited number of scribes ‘in the know’. While other and shorter
guides to siyakat exist, the documents read and explained by Fekete still form
a comprehensive introduction to this thorny subject. Among the shorter
ones must name a study by Dündar Günday (Günday, 1974). Its special
merit is the inclusion of eighteenth-century siyakat material, which Fekete
with his Hungarian perspective had rather neglected. As more and more
eighteenth-century documents become available in the Istanbul archives,
Günday’s samples of financial documents from the period will be increasing-
ly appreciated. Finally, there is a pocket-sized volume by Selâheddin Elker,
which contains only the siyakat figures, without any texts (Elker, 1953). But
L OCA TI N G OTT O M AN S OURC ES 73
Researchers who have worked on these Lebanese collections have had some
trouble accessing them, even though most of them enjoyed the support of at
least one influential Lebanese personality. This situation was directly and
indirectly due to the civil war (1975–1990), which led to the dispersal of
collections and also made it impossible to enter certain regions. Ottoman
Lebanon is exceptionally rich in private archives, most of them still in the
hands of the families that produced them. More than ten go back to the
nineteenth century. It is not known whether all these collections have
survived the war (Fawaz, 1983, p. 135).
Tunisia
Tunis (Mantran, 1961).
State Archives in Da r al-Bek (some seventeenth-century material, but
mainly on eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). Published catalogue of the
L OCA TI N G OTT O M AN S OURC ES 79
SU GG E ST ED RE AD INGS
Barkan, Ömer Lütfi (1966). ‘Edirne Askeri Kassamı’na Ait Tereke Defterleri
(1545–1659),’ Belgeler, III, 5–6, 1–479.
Barkan, Ömer Lutfı̂ and Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi (eds.) (1970). İstanbul Vakıfları Tahrı̂r
Defteri, 953 (1546) Târı̂hli (Istanbul: İstanbul Fetih Cemiyeti) (valuable intro-
duction, special emphasis on research which can be undertaken on the basis of
this text).
Behrens-Abouseif, Doris (1994). Egypt’s Adjustment to Ottoman Rule, Institu-
tions,waqf and Architecture in Cairo (16th and 17th Centuries) (Leiden: E. J. Brill)
(on the use of vakfiyes by the urban historian).
Bennassar, Bartholomé and Lucile Bennassar (1989). Les chrétiens d’Allah, l’histoire
extraordinaire des renégats (Paris: Perrin) (innovative use of Inquisition archives,
better on North Africa than on Istanbul).
Beydilli, Kemal (1984). ‘Ignatius Mouradgea D’Ohsson (Muradcan Tosuniyan)’,
İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Dergisi, 34, 247–314 (imaginative
use of Ottoman archival sources for the biography of an important intellectual
figure)
Beydilli, Kemal (1995). Türk Bilim ve Matbaacılık Tarihinde Mühendishane, Mühen-
dishâne Matbaası ve Kütüphânesi (1776–1826) (Istanbul: Eren) (important study
of library and publishing history).
Davis, Ralph (1967). Aleppo and Devonshire Square, English Traders in the Levant in the
Eighteenth Century (London, Melbourne, Toronto: Macmillan) (still one of the
best studies on European merchants in the Ottoman Empire).
Gara, Eleni (1998). ‘In Search of Communities in Seventeenth-Century Ottoman
Sources: The Case of the Kara Ferye District,’ Turcica, xxx, 135–162.
Goffman, Daniel (1990). Izmir and the Levantine World, 1550–1650 (Seattle: Uni-
versity of Washington Press) (as a sideline, there is a good treatment of the
operations of European diplomatic representatives).
Hitzel, Frédéric (ed.) (1997). Istanbul et les langues orientales (Paris: IFEA, L’Harmat-
tan, INALCO) (interesting collection of articles on the study of Turkish in
L OCA TI N G OTT O M AN S OURC ES 81
82
RURA L LI F E AS R EF L EC T ED IN AR C HIV A L S OUR C ES 83
TA X RE G I ST E RS
Given the penury of archaeological studies, and the near-absence of
texts directly reflecting the voices of peasants, we have to deal with sources
put together by Ottoman officials in order to tax and control peasants and
nomads. As the most famous governmental record, we will discuss the
Ottoman tax registers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, filed in the
Prime Minister’s archives under the heading of Tapu-Tahrir. In the second-
ary literature, we find the terms ‘tapu register’ and ‘tahrir register’ used
interchangeably. The earliest known example was compiled in 1432 (see
chapter 3). It concerns parts of modern Albania and was published by Halil
Inalcık (Inalcık, 1954a). Ottoman rulers had such registers prepared when-
ever a newly conquered province was placed under direct administration.
Vassal principalities, such as Moldavia, Wallachia, Transylvania, those parts
of the Crimea controlled by the Tatar Khans, or the most powerful of the
Kurdish principalities in the borderlands between the Ottoman Empire and
Iran, were normally exempt.
Tax registers were meant to provide a basis for the assignment of
revenue sources to cavallerists in the Ottoman army or to provincial admin-
istrators. Important revenues also accrued to the ruler himself, his viziers and
members of his family (Beldiceanu, 1980; article ‘Timar’ in İA by Ömer
Lütfi Barkan). Cavallerists received grants of small or moderate size (timar,
zeamet), while the larger assignments (has) generally went to members of the
court and higher administrative personnel. These grants were not hered-
itary, and even within a lifetime, a timar or zeamet-holder might be assigned
revenues in different provinces of the empire (Barkan, 1975b). As to the
higher-level members of the administration, they were mostly servitors of
the Sultan who, while not exactly slaves, held their offices at the ruler’s will
and pleasure (on provincial governors, see Kunt, 1983). As a result there was
considerable turnover at all levels. In order to make the appropriate addi-
RURA L LI F E AS R EF L EC T ED IN AR C HIV A L S OUR C ES 87
(sancak). Very often a whole province (vilayet) was covered at the same time,
which facilitated the later compilation of summary registers (icmal), as well as
special lists recording only privately owned lands (mülk) and pious founda-
tions (vakıf ). Within each sub-province, villages were grouped by district
(kaza) and sub-district (nahiye); however in many registers, the distinction
between kaza and nahiye remained rather vague. Towns and large villages
were further subdivided into quarters or wards; in settlements with non-
Muslim residents, the latter were listed separately, after the Muslims. Within
each town quarter, village or tribal unit, taxpayers were listed by given name
and father’s name. Under the heading of bive (widow), women householders
were often recorded in the registers of the Balkan provinces. Boys generally
went unrecorded until puberty, although some registers, particularly those
covering peasant foot soldiers (yaya, müsellem) included them as well (Bar-
kan, 1940–41; Elifoğ˘lu, 1984).
These lists of taxpayers constitute our only more or less reliable
source for the size of the Ottoman population before the late nineteenth
century, when censuses of the total population were first attempted. When
RURA L LI F E AS R EF L EC T ED IN AR C HIV A L S OUR C ES 89
the tahrirs were introduced to the historians’ world in the late 1930s and
early 1940s, they were regarded, somewhat optimistically, as very reliable
reflections of population size (Barkan, 1940–41). Since that time, a good
many monographs based on tahrir data have been published, and a degree of
disillusionment has accompanied our more sophisticated understanding of
the manner in which the tahrirs were put together. Among other things, we
must take into account the conditions of transport and communications as
they existed in the sixteenth century. Certain taxpayers may well have
hidden and thus avoided registration. If verification was sometimes attem-
pted by asking the opinion of a local timar-holder, that procedure may not
have necessarily been very effective either. For the revenue collector may
well have benefited if there were more taxpayers in ‘his’ village than
recorded in the register. In certain Palestinian kadi registers, we find docu-
ments about peasants who made fun of the registrar and refused to reply to
his questions (Singer, 1994, p. 91). One irate taxpayer even suggested that
the Sultan should subdue seven infidel kings before he asked his subjects for
money . . . (Singer, 1990, p. 114). Cases of this sort have not so far been
located in Anatolian sources, but that does not mean that every registrar was
given the information he demanded. When no data was available about a
given settlement, some registrars made a note of the fact; but that necessi-
tated a degree of self-confidence which not all bureaucrats can have pos-
sessed.
To better evaluate the information given in the tahrirs, historians
have assembled and analysed the rather lacunary sources relating to the
manner of their compilation. Thus we know something about the appoint-
ment of information-gathering officials and the credentials considered desir-
able in a man who was to undertake this difficult and responsible job
(Beldiceanu and Beldiceanu-Steinherr, 1978). Officials surveying a given
district carried copies of earlier registers and noted changes which had
intervened since the previous record (defter-i atik) had been compiled. At
least in the record-keeping office, if not in the field itself, the compilers also
compared their notes with the register preceding the defter-i atik, the so-
called defter-i köhne (Inalcık, 1954a). When we follow their example, we will
often find individual villages or even larger units whose data have been
copied wholesale from an earlier register. While it is of course possible that
little had changed between two counts only ten or twelve years apart,
unacknowledged verbatim quotations should always arouse the historian’s
suspicions.
Once we have computed the total number of taxpayers for a village,
we need to multiply it with a coefficient in order to arrive at an estimate of
90 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
1990). In the same vein the coastal region of Palestine should have attracted
migrants who found agriculture on the margins of the desert increasingly
unrewarding (Hütteroth, Abdulfattah, 1977). Whatever ingenious methods
are devised to deal with these problems, significant margins of error will
doubtlessly remain.
At the end of each settlement as recorded in the tahrir followed a list of
taxes due from its inhabitants. However not all taxes were included. Thus the
goods, money payments or labour services forming part of the irregularly
levied avarız tax were not listed, and the same thing often (but not always)
applied to the head tax payable by non-Muslims (cizye). Special emphasis was
placed on the tithe (öş¸ür), demanded from almost all agricultural products. In
spite of its name, the tithe generally amounted to more than one tenth of the
crop, but the share actually demanded varied widely from province to
province. On the basis of these tithe lists, agricultural maps of the entire
sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire can be drawn, but such maps have as yet
been published for only a few provinces (Hütteroth, 1968; Hütteroth,
Abdulfattah, 1977). Through the tahrirs, we know something about the
different agricultural landscapes of the sixteenth century: the grain monocul-
ture of the Anatolian plateau, the fields of cotton and sesame so characteristic
of the Mediterranean coastal plains and even the cultivation of high-quality
fruit in the immediate vicinity of Malatya (Islamoğ˘lu, Faroqhi, 1979).
Less instructive are the listings of bridge tolls and market dues paid
by the inhabitants of the more important villages as well as by townsmen.
For even in the sixteenth century, these dues, which usually formed part of
the crown revenues, were not collected directly but farmed out to the
highest bidder. This meant that the actual amounts of money collected
varied widely, and the sum recorded in the register might have but a tenuous
relationship with real receipts. But in spite of this limitation, records of
market dues and craftsmen’s taxes collected in small settlements are particu-
larly valuable for our purposes. Obviously these entries mean that the
inhabitants of such places did not make their living merely from agriculture.
Yet until recently there existed a model of the Ottoman countryside which
assumed that money was all but unknown and links to the towns non-
existent except for the conveyance of tax grains. Therefore evidence for
specialised rural production, particularly in the textile sector, and links to
often remote markets are of great interest even if we have trouble expressing
them in quantitative terms (Faroqhi, 1979).
With the increase of tax-farming at the beginning of the seven-
teenth century, the expensive and labour-consuming compilation of tahrir
registers was largely dropped. Only timars, in so far as they survived, were
RURA L LI F E AS R EF L EC T ED IN AR C HIV A L S OUR C ES 93
still recorded in separate registers, which modern archivists class with the
tahrirs. These later texts do not, however, contain the demographic data
which make the older registers so valuable. Occasionally, registers of tax-
payers were compiled for one district or another even in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries (for example, Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğ˘ü,
Ankara, Kuyudu Kadime No. 21, on the Haymana district to the west of
Ankara). But comprehensive information on large regions was no longer
made available.
As a result, the historian trying to arrive at estimates of rural
population for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is obliged to work
with a rather intractable documentation. For the Christian population, there
are the head tax (cizye) registers, which of course exist for older periods as
94 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
well, and some of the oldest have even been published (Barkan, 1964). But
before the reform of cizye collection undertaken in the 1690s many localities
paid their head taxes as lump sums, so that the records are not of much use to
the historian of Ottoman population. Only the reform of the 1690s estab-
lished that all males liable to the tax (women, children and handicapped
persons were exempted) should be accounted for individually (McGowan,
1981). In those regions of the Balkans where non-Muslims formed the
quasi-totality of the population, our information for the eighteenth century
is thus reasonably reliable.
But where the Muslim population is concerned, we need to have
recourse to the avarız registers. This constitutes a problem, because avarız
taxes were not collected from real households, but from so-called ‘tax
houses’, a mere figment of the bureaucratic imagination (İA article ‘avarız’;
McGowan, 1981, pp. 105–14). Every tax house was liable for the same
amount as every other when the avarız was collected, although demands
varied from year to year. To compensate for the differences in wealth among
households, more poor families were joined into a ‘tax house’ than was true
of their wealthier fellow villagers. This means that only if we possess
information on the size of ‘tax houses’ in a particular locality at a particular
time, do we know by what coefficient to multiply the number of tax houses
in order to arrive at the number of taxpayers. Unfortunately for us, the
coefficient in question varies between three or four and fifteen! Moreover,
exemption from avarız was frequently granted to people who performed
services to the Ottoman state. Villagers who repaired roads or guarded
dangerous passes were typically exonerated from these often burdensome
levies thus making the historian’s work more difficult (Orhonlu, 1967, pp.
50–6).
Thus only under special circumstances do these data permit us to
establish the total number of taxpayers inhabiting a given region. But with
due precautions, they do allow comparisons between different regions of the
Ottoman Empire, or between the population levels of a single region at
different points in time. Given numerous wars and local uprisings, we can
assume that a decrease in the number of avarız ‘tax houses’ meant grave
difficulties. Either the population was impoverished to the point that the
Ottoman administration granted tax rebates, and/or the taxable population
had declined. Increases in the number of ‘tax houses’ are less easy to
interpret. They do not necessarily mean a growth of wealth and/or popula-
tion. After all, the administration may have assumed that the taxpayers had
recovered to the point of being able to pay higher taxes when this was far
from being the case. Local circumstances have to be examined in detail
RURA L LI F E AS R EF L EC T ED IN AR C HIV A L S OUR C ES 95
NE W L I GH T ON TH E PE AS A N TR Y: AR CHI V A L
RE C ORDS OF TH E E I GH TE E NT H AN D
NI NE T EE N TH CE N TU RI ES
As the next step, we will take a brief look at the sources to be used
by a researcher who undertakes the study of an eighteenth- or nineteenth-
century village. Apart from the kadi registers, if available, it is worth
consulting the ahkâm defterleri (see chapter 3), particularly if the province in
question is relatively small; for then the likelihood of finding information on
individual settlements increases significantly. Disputes between timar holders
and foundation administrators, frequently documented in these registers,
may prove rather tedious reading. But they sometimes permit conclusions
concerning the limits between villages, and the ‘gray zones’ separating rural
settlements. Complaints about robberies may serve as a source for rural
96 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
trade, often important but very little known. An occasional murder story
may be used as an indicator of power relations within the village, or of
currents of migration linking the countryside to the towns. But it is difficult
to predict what information may be available in any individual case. There-
fore it may be best to concentrate not on a single village, but on a group of
settlements, possibly on one of the sub-districts known as a nahiye in
Ottoman administrative parlance.
In recent years, numerous sections of the Prime Minister’s Archive
in Istanbul have been catalogued, some of which are at least indirectly
relevant to rural life. Thus we now have access to fifty-four registers
concerning the sheep tax, a series which begins in 919/1513 and extends
until 1251/1835. While in later centuries, this tax, like most others, was
farmed out, in the earliest period officials were sent out to count the sheep
and collect taxes according to a rate fixed by the local tax regulations
(kanunname). Further evidence on sheep breeding can be found in the
Ganem Mukata¨ası Kalemi, which dealt with the sheep Balkan drovers
needed to supply for the consumption of Istanbul. While here the series
consists of an imposing 369 registers (973/1565 to 1256/1840), again this
tax was often farmed out, which does not exactly facilitate the interpretation
of the available data (Collective work, 1992).
Within one of the newly opened sections, the Harameyn Mu-
hasebesi, which in principle concerns Mecca and Medina, we encounter
documentation on pious foundations (vakıf ) helpful for our purposes. When
evaluating this material, we must keep in mind that pious foundations were
more frequent in the rural surroundings of major towns than in the open
countryside. Vakıf accounts, theoretically prepared year by year but surviving
only as fragments, often contain precious evidence not on dues as they were
anticipated, but as they were actually collected. Most of the registers in the
Harameyn Muhasebesi concern the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
although earlier material is occasionally included. In addition, it is worth
consulting the nineteenth-century registers located in the archives of the
Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğ˘ü (see chapter 3). Particularly interesting from our
point of view are the records concerning the construction of endowed village
mosques. Apparently rural mosques had not very been common in the
sixteenth century, but were built in increasing numbers during the nine-
teenth. In particular, it would be worth finding out whether the initiative
generally came from the state or from local people. Ultimately the history of
village mosques may fill a major gap in our understanding, for the sources
examined to date tell us much more about economic activity and social
structure than about peasant world views, which remain a terra incognita.
RURA L LI F E AS R EF L EC T ED IN AR C HIV A L S OUR C ES 97
DE AL ING W I TH T A H R I R S: A S OUR C E F OR
P RE - O T TO MA N H I ST ORY
Modern historians concerned with the tahrirs have emphasised the
gaps and limitations of the information provided (Lowry, 1992). Yet in spite
of all its shortcomings, this material is of special value to the mediaevalist.
For the earliest tahrirs document, albeit indirectly, the state of rural settle-
ment in central Anatolia when under the domination of the Karamanids.
The same applies to the island of Lemnos during the last period of Byzantine
rule, and even to Albania when still controlled by local princes (Beldiceanu
and Beldiceanu-Steinherr, 1968; Lowry, in Bryer and Lowry, 1986; Inalcık,
1954a). Without the Ottoman tahrirs, we would know very little about this
pre-Ottoman period in Anatolian and Balkan history. Thus there has
developed a branch of Seljuk-Byzantine-Ottoman studies dealing with the
transitions from one of these régimes to the next, in which tahrirs play a
central role. Nicoara Beldiceanu and Irène Beldiceanu-Steinherr have ran-
sacked the early tahrirs of Karaman for records of rural power relations under
the Karamanid dynasty. Continuing Barkan’s work, Irène Beldiceanu-
Steinherr has concentrated on the early history of the ortakçı kullar, discussing
individual villages whose history can be followed back into the mediaeval
period (Beldiceanu-Steinherr, 1976). Faruk Sümer has studied the traces of
major mediaeval nomadic confederations in Anatolian toponymy, a crucial
indicator for the transition from Byzantine to Seljuk and Ottoman Anatolia
(Sümer, 1980).
From a geographer’s point of view, the same question has been
investigated by Xavier de Planhol, who regards the immigration of central
Asian nomads into Anatolia as part of a much broader process of what he
calls ‘beduinisation’ of the Near East in the Middle Ages (de Planhol, 1968).
Whatever the merits and demerits of this view, de Planhol has stressed the
specificity of Anatolia, where rainfall agriculture is possible everywhere, and
the settlement of nomads therefore came about within a relatively short time
period. By the sixteenth century, the tahrirs already recorded a territory
settled essentially by peasants, with nomads of major importance mainly in
eastern Anatolia.
One of the regions favoured by scholars engaged in ‘transition
studies’ is the Grand Komnenoi principality of Trabzon, conquered by
Mehmed II in 1464. This preference is due to the fact that local chroniclers
and monasteries have produced documentation on the late Byzantine coun-
tryside. On the other hand, the Ottoman conquest was accompanied by
extensive deportation (sürgün), which has left traces in the tahrirs. Anthony
Bryer has studied the Byzantine evidence, which includes toponymy, in-
RURA L LI F E AS R EF L EC T ED IN AR C HIV A L S OUR C ES 101
scriptions and the remains of rural churches (Bryer, in Bryer and Lowry,
1986). Attention has been focused on the rural district of Maçka, where
change was less rapid than in Trabzon proper, and where conditions typical
of the late Byzantine countryside survived to be reflected in the early
Ottoman tahrirs. At the same time, the tahrirs and kadi registers provide an
Ottoman view of conditions obtaining in Maçka during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
The studies of Bryer, Lowry and their collaborators are remarkable
for the solid evidence on which they are based (Bryer, 1986; Lowry, 1986b).
However, it would be rash in the extreme to assume that their findings
applied to all newly conquered Ottoman territories. With its narrow strip of
fertile land isolated from the hinterland by high mountain ranges, the
northern coast of Anatolia has been a special case throughout recorded
history, and should have been in that position during the second half of the
fifteenth century as well.
Even so the studies edited by Bryer and Lowry are of major
methodological significance; for they show what we can know under the
best of circumstances, as well as the limits of our knowledge. Down to the
present day, many broad assumptions about the Byzantine–Seljuk–Ottoman
transition are based on insufficient evidence. In the absence of even incom-
plete population counts, nobody knows how many people lived in Anatolia
at the end of the eleventh, thirteenth or fifteenth century, how many of
them were peasants or nomads, or how many descended from immigrants or
could be regarded as ‘autochthonous’.2 But this all but insoluble difficulty
has not prevented certain historians from claiming either that territories
conquered by the Ottomans were virtually empty, or that a considerable
part of the local population was displaced or else converted. In most
instances, these claims cannot be substantiated either way, and the work of
Bryer and Lowry has shown up the difference between claims based on
evidence and assumptions floating in the air.
OUT SID E T H ET A H R IR : T HE Ç I FT L I K D EB A T E
In any discussion of Ottoman agricultural history, the çiftlik is bound
to crop up. In our present account of primary sources, work on çiftliks is
important because it shows what the historian can do once there are no
tahrirs available to guide him/her. Unfortunately, the term çiftlik is ambigu-
ous, and therefore, we must begin by clarifying its different meanings. A çift
refers to a pair (yoke) of oxen, and the derivative çiftlik can be used to denote
2
That the definition of the term ’autochthonous’ varies strongly constitutes yet another problem.
102 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
ture of the times favoured lordly power on the village level as well (Ander-
son, 1979, pp. 196–97). In the Russian case (where grain export was not yet
an issue) peasant mobility was terminated in order to allow the lower
nobility a secure revenue base in exchange for constant military and admin-
istrative service to the Tsar (Hellie, 1971). Where Ottoman history was
concerned, at one point it seemed tempting to assume that market condi-
tions, that is European demand for cheap grain or cotton, were responsible
for the deterioration of the peasant condition brought about by çiftlik
agriculture (Stoianovich, 1953).
But in the eyes of Europeanist historians, this assumption soon must
have appeared rather outmoded. For by the mid-1970s, when Anderson’s
seminal study first appeared, political developments already were being
viewed as the principal factors responsible for the ‘second serfdom’. To
Ottomanist historians dealing with çiftliks however, this turnabout on the
‘theoretical’ level was at best indirectly significant. More important were
empirical considerations, such as the realisation that çiftliks held by non-
peasants were much less widespread on Ottoman territory than had been
originally assumed. McGowan’s carefully crafted maps moreover demon-
strated that çiftliks appeared early and in relatively large numbers in regions
such as the Black Sea coasts of modern Bulgaria. However, down to the late
eighteenth century these regions specialised in the supply of grain to Istanbul
and were not linked to the world market at all (McGowan, 1981, pp. 76–7).
Both Inalcık’s and McGowan’s work showed that in the Ottoman
lands as well, political rather than economic factors often prompted peasant
dispossession. Tax farmers and other persons gaining control of agricultural
land were often more interested in taking away what could be gotten from
the hapless villagers, and assigning this ‘surplus’ to their numerous retinues.
Inserting themselves into the commercial economy, be it domestic or
international, must have been alien to these people. By contrast, certain
commercially active rural magnates, such as the Karaosmanoğ˘ulları of Izmir
and Manisa, at least during the eighteenth century sold grain and cotton
which they had collected as taxes. Or else they profited from the commer-
cialization of agricultural produce entrusted to them by the farmers of the
region, a major commercial force without possessing any çiftliks at all
(Veinstein, 1975). Relations between çiftlik formation and commercialisa-
tion have thus turned out to be both more tenuous and more complicated
than had originally been assumed.
104 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
TH E I MP AC T OF P EA SA NT ST UD I ES
Quite apart from these empirical considerations, from the 1970s onward,
Ottoman rural history has received a new impulse through the work of
scholars with a background in peasant studies. Among the approaches thus
‘imported’ into Ottoman rural historiography, we will take a closer look at
the peasant economy as seen by the Russian scholar A. V. Chayanov, a
victim of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s (Chayanov, English translation,
1966). This economist claimed that the peasant household was not a
capitalist undertaking, and peasant families did not strive to maximise their
money returns. To the contrary, the amount of labour peasants were willing
to invest in their holding depended not on market opportunities, but on the
family’s stage in the life cycle. Young married couples whose children were
not yet able to work might rent additional land, and engage in what
Chayanov described as self-exploitation in order to feed their offspring. But
with the older children marrying and leaving the holding, the parent couple
would scale down the size of its enterprise before finally relinquishing it to
the next generation.
Chayanov’s theory is built on the assumption that the peasant
economy is different in kind from its capitalist counterpart, so that the
findings valid for capitalist enterprises do not apply here. He has therefore
been classed with the ‘substantivists’, who assume that pre- or non-capitalist
societies obey laws totally different from those governing their capitalist-
industrial counterparts. While there is as yet no monograph of an Ottoman
village explicitly using Chayanov’s theories as a framework, his ideas have
been important for Ottoman rural historians none the less. For the assump-
tion that social relations rather than market laws govern the behaviour of
peasants has had considerable appeal to all those who wish to show capital-
ism as an historical social formation with definite limits, rather than a
universally valid category.
Among other peasant studies with an impact on Ottoman histor-
ians, we may mention the work of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie on the
peasants of Languedoc in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Le Roy
Ladurie, tr. John Day, 1974). This work can be classed as ‘neo-Malthusian’,
because the author takes up ideas developed by the eighteenth-century
English economist Malthus, and also as ‘formalist’. By ‘formalists’ we denote
scholars who assume that certain fundamental economic laws apply, no
matter which social formation is being studied. Malthus had developed his
theories concerning the linkage of population growth and secular wage
decline when the early industrial economy of England was already fully
RURA L LI F E AS R EF L EC T ED IN AR C HIV A L S OUR C ES 105
developed. But when building his theory, which implied that people would
multiply until they pressed down wages to subsistence level (unless they
‘prudentially’ limited the number of their offspring), Malthus assumed
secular stagnation in agricultural output. He chose to ignore the increase in
yields which the ‘new husbandry’ of the time was making possible.
Le Roy Ladurie has reformulated Malthus’ concept to suit the
realities of sixteenth-century Languedoc, where indeed technological prog-
ress in agriculture was limited. He has defended the view that the sixteenth-
century population increase resulted in exactly the consequences Malthus
had predicted, namely wage decline and increase in food prices. These in
turn led to the stagnation of population during the seventeenth century (Le
Roy Ladurie, tr. John Day 1974, pp. 98–113, 239–245). Le Roy Ladurie’s
views obviously are based on the ‘formalist’ premise that capitalist categories
can usefully be applied to an early modern peasant economy. In the Otto-
man context, neo-Malthusian ideas, to a degree, have informed the work of
Michael Cook on selected Anatolian districts. Cook has attempted to
answer the fundamental question, first posed by Fernand Braudel, whether
the sixteenth-century increase in rural population led to a scarcity in land or
‘population pressure’ as the author calls it (Cook, 1972, pp. 1–9). This
question, which has its place in the framework generated by Malthus and his
predecessor Ricardo, Cook has answered with a qualified ‘yes’ (Cook,
1972, p. 29). In concrete terms, he has shown that ‘marginal’, that is
relatively infertile, land was being taken into cultivation. Moreover, in spite
of Ottoman rules prohibiting the subdivision of peasant holdings, larger
farms were split up to accommodate a growing number of heirs.
By contrast Huricihan Islamoğ˘lu-Inan in her recent work on the
peasants of Çorum and Sivas has taken exception to this point of view,
basing herself upon the theory constructed by the development economist
Esther Boserup (Islamoğ˘lu-İ˙nan, 1994, pp. 19–20). According to these two
authors, population growth is to be seen as a factor promoting rather than
limiting economic growth. With increasing population, the peasant family
has enough labour available to engage in specialised market-oriented activ-
ity – in this statement, one may detect the impact of Chayanov’s peasants
exploiting themselves in order to feed a young family. One may also link this
assumption to the theory of the Dutch economic historian Jan de Vries,
which attempts to explain how early modern European wageworkers ac-
quired more consumption goods in spite of stable or declining real wages (de
Vries, 1993). In the course of the so-called ‘industrious revolution’, more
women and children were put to work spinning, weaving or growing
commercial crops. Thus an increasing number of goods became available at
106 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
affordable prices in the market. More intensive work compensated for lower
wages, and many families, particularly in privileged regions such as the
Netherlands, were able to acquire an increasing number of objects.
Islamoğ˘lu-Inan equally assumes that sixteenth-century Anatolian
peasants cultivated crops requiring more labour as their numbers increased.
Thus peasants in the region of Niksar took up the cultivation of rice, in the
sixteenth century still a semi-luxury aimed exclusively at the market. More-
over, rural crafts such as cotton-weaving came to be important. Islamoğ˘lu-
Inan has also suggested that the beneficiaries of this increased production of
marketable goods were not so much the producers themselves as the tax
takers of various types. In her view, this situation may explain why even in
the eighteenth century, peasant lands were not expropriated (Islamoğ˘lu-
Inan, 1987, pp. 122–26). While this particular period was marked by
decentralisation and the rise of local magnates, these powerholders could
cream off the profits of peasant production without land ownership, and
therefore without much managerial effort of their own.
3
Hütteroth (1968) contains a detailed discussion of these issues with respect to the region of Konya.
108 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
SU GG E ST ED RE AD INGS
Adanır, Fikret (1998). ‘‘The Ottoman Peasantries, c. 1360–c. 1860’’ in The Peasan-
tries of Europe from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries ed. Tom Scott,
(London, New York: Longman, 269–312 (the latest survey of research into
Ottoman rural life, clever and superbly documented).
Beldiceanu, Nicoara and Irène Beldiceanu-Steinherr (1978). ‘Règlement ottoman
concernant le recensement (première moitié du XVIe siècle)’, Südost-Forschun-
gen, 37, 1–40 (careful empirical study on the mechanics of tahrir compilation).
Bryer, Anthony and Heath Lowry (eds.) (1986). Continuity and Change in Late
Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society, (Birmingham, Washington: The Univer-
sity of Birmingham, Dumbarton Oaks) (a collection of informative, empirical
studies).
Chayanov, A. V. (1966). The Theory of the Peasant Economy (Homewood, Ill.) (one
of the fundamental texts in twentieth-century peasant studies).
Hütteroth, Wolf Dieter and Kamal Abdulfattah (1977). Historical Geography of
Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century (Erlangen/
Germany: Fränkische Geographische Gesellschaft) (‘lost villages’ in the Syrian
desert).
Inalcık, Halil (1994). ‘The Ottoman State: Economy and Society, 1300–1600,’ in
An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914 ed. Halil
Inalcık with Donald Quataert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
(paperback version 1997, Inalcık’s work appears as vol. 1; explication of
Ottoman peasant economies according to Chayanov’s model).
İ˙slamoğ˘lu-İ˙nan, Huri (1994). State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire, Agrarian Power
Relations and Regional Economic Development in Ottoman Anatolia during the
Sixteenth Century (Leiden: E. J. Brill) (to date, the most elaborate attempt to
join tahrir studies with social theory).
Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel (1974). The Peasants of Languedoc, tr. John Day
(Urbana, III: University of Illinois Press) (pathbreaking study on Mediterra-
nean peasants in the early modern age).
RURA L LI F E AS R EF L EC T ED IN AR C HIV A L S OUR C ES 109
McGowan, Bruce (1981). Economic Life in Ottoman Europe, Taxation, Trade and the
Struggle for Land, 1600–1800 (Cambridge, Paris: Cambridge University Press
and Maison des Sciences de l’Homme) (important collection of essays on
population and the çiftlik problem).
Orhonlu, Cengiz (1967). Osmanlı ˙mparatorluğ
İ ˘unda Derbend Teş¸kilâtı (Istanbul: İ˙stan-
bul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi) (classical study on privileged peasants).
Singer, Amy (1994). Palestinian Peasants and Ottoman Officials, Rural Administration
around Sixteenth-century Jerusalem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
(on a well-documented rural society)
Veinstein, Gilles (1975). ‘Ayân de la région d’Izmir et le commerce du Levant
(deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle)’, Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la
Méditerranée, XX, 131–146 (how a magnate could exercise rural power and
commercial initiative without holding çiftliks).
5
E U R O P E A N S O U R C E S ON O T T O M A N
H I S T OR Y : T H E T R A V E L LE R S
Due to the work of Edward Said and his associates, the biases inherent in
European writing on the Middle East have become obvious to many if not
most practitioners in the field (Said, 1978). Given the large number of
available Ottoman materials, some researchers might therefore envisage
basing Ottoman history entirely on Ottoman sources1. When dealing with
certain topics, studies built almost entirely on local or else Istanbul-based
evidence can in fact be undertaken. As an example, one might mention the
tax assignments known as timar, a characteristic feature of the administration
of the central Ottoman realm in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Since
outsiders had only a superficial knowledge of the system’s working, their
testimony can largely be disregarded. But in other cases, the information
relayed by Venetian, English or French travellers and embassy personnel is
so important that we cannot simply neglect it. After all, the Ottoman state of
the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries defined itself as a state conquering
infidels (Inalcık, 1973, p. 6). This means that close contact to Venetian
merchants, Balkan princes, and occasionally even members of western
European ruling houses existed from the very early phases of Ottoman
history. A critical use of European sources thus constitutes a major challenge
to the Ottomanist historian.
In this chapter we will discuss some of the problems raised by this
situation, concentrating on narrative sources from the sixteenth to eight-
eenth centuries. In a second, much shorter section, our focus will be
European archival materials, with Ottoman port towns of the eighteenth
1 Unfortunately there are very few Chinese, Indian or Japanese travellers’ accounts to counterbalance
those written by Europeans.
110
EU R OP EA N S OU R CE S ON OT TOM A N H IS TOR Y 111
were (and are) both difficult of access and full of gaps and errors. Therefore
authors of this period often distorted the names of foreign persons and places
so badly that their identification poses major problems, to say nothing of
name changes connected with the disappearance and emergence of states
since the sixteenth century. As a result, the present-day reader is in dire need
of help when trying to make sense of older itineraries, and life would be
much easier were studies comparable to Yérasimos’ work available for later
periods as well.
Since they are not, we must make do with two reference works
dating from the nineteenth century (Vivien de St Martin, 1852; Carl Ritter,
1843–). Both authors flourished in the Victorian period, composing their
works in order to highlight the contributions of European travellers to the
sciences of physical and historical geography. Vivien de St Martin’s work
concentrates on Anatolia, and is compact and easy to handle. However, due
to its early date of publication, many travellers about whom we need
information are not included. The same applies to Ritter’s work, which by
contrast is multi-volume and covers vast sections of Asia never included in
the Ottoman Empire. Finding the volumes relevant to our purposes may
therefore take some time. Readers concerned with western Anatolia only
may therefore turn to the work of Usha M. Luther, an Indian historical
geographer (Luther, 1989). Luther’s major interest is in the reconstruction
of the route network. This involves a critical examination of travellers’
itineraries, so that her book contains useful information about the circum-
stances surrounding seventeenth- to nineteenth-century travelling. But
biographical information and the travellers’ publishing histories do not form
part of Luther’s agenda.
PILG RI MS
Even after the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus had brought this monopoly to
an end, many pilgrims continued to travel by way of Venice. After all, a
tradition of travel management had been established in that city. There even
existed a special magistrate supervising the entrepreneurs, who, as a kind of
early modern travel agents, conveyed pilgrims to the Holy Land. But this
mode of travel explains why most pilgrims had very little contact with
Ottoman realities. Moreover, even though the publication of a pilgrimage
account for many pious and wealthy travellers seems to have almost formed
part of the pilgrimage ritual, many of these accounts contain almost no
original observations. Comments which at first glance appear personal, such
as the numerous remarks concerning the decadence of Palestine under
Mamluk or Ottoman rule, upon closer investigation equally turn out to be
highly standardised. By ritualistically adhering to the very words of his
predecessors, every author demonstrated his adherence to accepted Chris-
tian values (Yérasimos, 1991, pp. 19–20).
Salomon Schweigger has already appeared to us in the double
identity of an embassy employee and a pilgrim. Quite frequently, people
who had come to the Ottoman Empire for business purposes took time off
for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the other sites known from Biblical
history. We will dwell for a moment upon a fairly late example of the genre,
namely the account of Henry Maundrell. As Anglican chaplain to the
English Levant Company merchants residing in Aleppo, Maundrell visited
Jerusalem on an Easter pilgrimage in 1697 (Maundrell, repr. 1963). He
stands out for his power of observation and literary gifts; most other
pilgrimage accounts are much more pedestrian. English merchants residing
in Aleppo organised such a trip to Jerusalem every year, and differently from
most other Europeans, they arrived in Palestine by an overland route. Thus
there was more to describe, and Maundrell found additional scope for his
erudition and literary talent.
In spite of his ecclesiastical calling however, one may debate
whether Maundrell should be regarded as a pilgrim. Certainly his abrasive
comments on the Orthodox Easter celebrations, with their disparaging
description of the ceremonies surrounding a fire supposedly descended from
heaven, may be read as confessional polemics of the conventional kind. In
this sense, Maundrell’s snide remarks fit well into the pilgrimage account of
an Anglican gentleman. But it is also possible to see these less than charitable
remarks as an expression of the discomfort felt by a young man of rationalist
sympathies, when confronted with something that he regarded as the
fraudulent exploitation of other people’s credulity (Maundrell, repr., 1963,
pp. 127–31).
116 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
RE T U R NE D C AP T IVE S
The accounts of returned prisoners constitute a genre in itself; the
most famous personage with first-hand experience of captivity is surely
Miguel de Cervantes, who fell into the hands of the Algerians in 1575 and
did not return to Spain until 1580 (Cervantes, 1997). The stories he wrote
on this theme, even though they cannot be considered realistic accounts, are
relevant for our purposes because at the time of his captivity, Algiers already
formed part of the Ottoman Empire,2 even though the sea captains and
janissaries who dominated the government of this province retained con-
siderable de facto autonomy. In particular, they concluded their own treaties
with European powers, and did not necessarily feel bound by the privileges
and peace conditions granted by the Sultan in Istanbul.
Apart from those taken at sea, most captivity accounts were written
by prisoners of war of central European background. Some were taken in
battle, others in the frequent frontier raids which commanders on both sides
undertook even in peacetime. Among the earliest extant is the account of
Hans Schiltberger, a minor knight of Bavaria, taken prisoner during the
Ottoman–Hungarian war of 1394. After having been a slave on Ottoman
territory, he fell into Timur’s hands, when the latter had defeated and
imprisoned Bayezid I at the battle of Ankara (1402). As a result, Schiltberger
was carried off all the way to eastern Iran, but managed to return to his
Bavarian home in 1427. Schiltberger’s account is valuable because he writes
about a period for which we have very few sources in any language.
2 ‘El amante liberal’ and ‘La espanola inglesa’ are both in the Novelas ejemplares, I, pp. 135–88 and 241–83
(Cervantes, ed. Sieber, 1997)
EU R OP EA N S OU R CE S ON OT TOM A N H IS TOR Y 117
ME R CH AN TS
Apart from pilgrims to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, merchants prob-
ably formed the majority of European travellers to the Ottoman Empire
before the nineteenth century. But due to their involvement with the
practical business of buying and selling, they have not left as high a propor-
tion of travel accounts as the diplomats. A typical Venetian or English
merchant active in the Ottoman Empire wrote business letters to his
principals in Venice or London, not book-length manuscripts for publica-
tion. Yet such business-like reports, particularly if available in quantity, can
be of great interest. The English economic historian Ralph Davis has used
merchants’ letters to produce a very informative book on English traders
active in Aleppo (Davis, 1967, compare chapter 3). It contains chapters
about the more prominent family firms whose principals in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries held shares in the Levant Company and therefore
possessed the right to send their sons and nephews to Aleppo as ‘factors’. A
factor was supposed to observe the market closely, so that his reports might
contain information on local developments such as fashion changes. For
contrary to widespread opinion, the tastes of wealthier Ottoman customers
were not immutable. A good factor would also inform his principals of the
arrival, or failure to arrive, of caravans from Iran. After all, a large share of the
English woollen cloth imported into Aleppo merely passed through the
Ottoman Empire in transit to Bandar ‘Abbas and Isfahan. General informa-
tion on financial crisis at the Ottoman centre also might be included, as the
well-to-do Ottomans who could afford imported cloth might be less in-
clined to buy in times of monetary instability. Last but not least, as factors
were cooped up together for much of the time in a single khan, even the
most sober business correspondent might be tempted to include some gossip
on his colleagues.
When merchants wrote with an eye to publication, they often
produced small booklets with lists of the different coins, weights and
measurements current in the places they had visited. Such booklets have a
long tradition, one of the oldest and best known being the Practica della
mercatura by the fourteenth-century Florentine merchant Pegolotti
(Pegolotti, ed. Evans, 1936). This treatise lists the goods most profitably
purchased in certain places of the eastern Mediterranean; it includes
Anatolia, at that time controlled by a multitude of Turkish princes. As a
result, we know something about the quality of fourteenth-century Adana
cotton in contrast to the same material as produced in Cyprus or Syria. But
detailed information of this kind is not a standard feature; in fact, many
merchants might have considered it a trade secret to be guarded from
EU R OP EA N S OU R CE S ON OT TOM A N H IS TOR Y 119
MI S SION AR IE S
Missionaries form another numerous group among the writers of
travel accounts. According to the Islamic religious law (ş¸eriat), apostasy from
Islam is punishable by death, and in any case, very few Muslim subjects of
the Sultan would ever have wanted to listen to a non-Muslim missionary. So
emissaries of the Pope and members of Catholic orders, who visited the
Ottoman Empire in substantial numbers from the seventeenth century
onward, addressed themselves to the Christian subjects of the Sultan. Protes-
tant missions only became at all widespread in the nineteenth century, and
adopted the same policy.
Where the seventeenth century is concerned, Catholic missionary
efforts must be seen as part of the movement known as the Counter-
EU R OP EA N S OU R CE S ON OT TOM A N H IS TOR Y 121
Reformation, and in other contexts as the Catholic Reform. Not merely the
Pope and the Spanish kings, but also the French rulers of the Bourbon
dynasty were committed to the expansion of the ecclesiastical – but not of
the secular – authority of the Pope4. This involved encouragement to
various Ottoman Christian groups to submit to Papal authority (see p, 67).
Those who consented usually retained most of their specific religious ritual,
and most importantly, their liturgical languages, that is Greek, Arabic or
Armenian as the case might be (Masters, in press).
Franciscan, Dominican and especially Jesuit missionaries were sup-
posed to write reports on what they had seen when travelling in the
Ottoman Empire. Particularly in France, these missives were often pub-
lished, in order to give potential sponsors among the pious laity a sense of
what was being achieved. They often figure as ‘Lettres édifiantes et
curieuses’, a title showing the mixture of piety and curiosity about foreign
parts that these texts appealed to. Many of the men sent to the Ottoman
Empire or the Caucasus knew the language of the people they were
expected to address. They thus possessed a distinct advantage over diplomats
and merchants, who rarely spoke Ottoman, Arabic or Armenian. Moreover,
the missionaries were often interested in the material and social circumstan-
ces under which their potential flocks lived. After all the success of their
missions, such as it was, depended on an accurate assessment of local power
structures. However, the often narrow focus on church affairs explains why
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century missionary reports have received rela-
tively little attention from present-day historians.
By far the largest number of missionary publications, however,
dates from the nineteenth century, including an important corpus of writ-
ings by Anglo-Saxon Protestant missionaries. Quite often married missiona-
ries were accompanied by their wives, who might engage in schoolteaching
and social work among women and children. Some of these women wrote
about their experiences, forming a separate group among the female visitors
to the Ottoman Empire (Melman, 1992, pp. 165–234). Of special interest is
the work of Lucy Garnett, who around the turn of the past century, was
associated with Robert College, Istanbul, and published extensively about
local folklore (Melman, 1992, pp. 106–140). Moreover, some of these
female missionaries and missionary wives made an impact on the domestic
culture of the people attending mission schools. For the teaching of what
these women regarded as ‘good housekeeping’ formed an important part of
4 Due to the almost continuous warfare between the Ottomans and the Spanish Habsburgs during the
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Spanish policies had little impact upon Ottoman Christians.
122 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
the curriculum of missionary schools for local girls.5 Thus the writings of
women missionaries also may be read as sources for nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century changes in material culture, which were especially no-
ticeable among Ottoman Christians.
loss of power the Sultans had suffered in the recent war over Hungary. I do
not dare to judge whether John Ball knew anything about the eighteenth-
century preference of the Ottoman elites for small, light and elegant con-
structions.
Gyllius and other people drawing and measuring monuments were
sometimes taken for spies, and given the tense political conditions of the
times, there was no lack of people who in fact were out to gather intelli-
gence. Information, both true and false, travelled back and forth between
courts and governments. Ottoman Sultans equally maintained their own
spies, who informed them of what happened at contemporary European
courts (Skilliter, 1976). Embassies gathered intelligence along with their
other functions. We can assume that some of the travel writers were also
‘debriefed’ on their return to French and Habsburg territories. But much of
this activity must have been oral and remains untraceable (for a notorious
case of intelligence gathering from the sixteenth century, see Nicolay, ed.
Gomez-Géraud and Yérasimos, 1989).
RE LA TI N G T O ONE ’S PR E D ECE S S OR S: T H E
PRO BLE M OF ‘OR I GI NA LI T Y ’ IN T RA VE L
AC CO UN TS
In the sixteenth or eighteenth century, no differently than today, a
person’s profession or major activity determined the things he/she consider-
ed worth reporting. To mention one well-studied example, in the early
eighteenth century Mary Wortley Montague, the young, well-educated and
intellectually versatile wife of a British ambassador, accompanied her hus-
band to Edirne and Istanbul (ed. Desai and Jack, 1993). As a woman of the
aristocracy, she was able to meet high-born Ottoman ladies, an experience
totally impossible to any male visitor. Moreover, she learned Ottoman,
something that male diplomats almost never attempted. From her descrip-
tion of the manner in which she was received in Istanbul or Edirne, it is clear
that Lady Mary was regarded as something of a curiosity, and she enjoyed
this reaction as long as it came from people she considered her social equals
(for an example see Montague, ed. Desai and Jack, 1993, pp. 86ff.). Needless
to say, Lady Mary’s sympathies did not extend to men and women outside
this charmed circle. But as she was a good observer of her social environ-
ment – and also on account of her elegant style – the letters she wrote to her
friends at home are still considered a classic of travel literature.
While Lady Mary was thus an innovator in the genre of Ottoman
travel writing, she also must be placed within a literary tradition. This was
126 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
the art of letter writing, as practised by some aristocratic ladies even in the
seventeenth century. After all, Madame de Sévigné (1626–1696) has gained
herself a place in French literature by her lively accounts of Versailles and
Parisian life. Her younger contemporary Elisabeth Charlotte, princess Palat-
ine and sister-in-law to Louis XIV, became a shrewd chronicler of French
court life around 1700. Others even approached more abstract topics; thus
Sophie Charlotte, the first Prussian queen, discussed religious and philo-
sophical matters in her correspondence with the philosopher Gottfried
Leibniz. When reading the accounts of the Vienna and Dresden courts,
which in Lady Mary Montague’s collection of letters precede those covering
the Ottoman Empire, her debt to the tradition of aristocratic female letter
writing is especially apparent (ed. Desai and Jack, 1993, pp. 12–44).
The conventions of feminine letter writing forbade Lady Mary to
be too demonstrative about her scholarship – although there are exceptions
to this rule, such as her letter to the poet Alexander Pope (ed. Desai and Jack,
1993, pp. 73ff). However, the ‘male’ tradition of travel-writing allowed,
indeed encouraged, the presentation of scholarly credentials. We have
already encountered Busbecq, Maundrell and Gyllius, for whom scholarship
constituted an aspect of their identity to be deployed, not to say flaunted,
before their readers. For our purposes, this commitment to scholarship is
often not an advantage, but a distinct drawback. For then as now, scholarly
activity involves knowing the writings of one’s predecessors, and often
‘knowing’ meant something like ‘copying’. As every undergraduate knows,
it is often difficult to find words for novel experiences, and travel in the
Balkans or Anatolia was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most writers.
Thus, predecessors’ formulations might be taken over simply because they
were the first thing that came to mind.
But quite often, the matter was much more complicated, and only a
brief outline of the problem is possible here. Down to the Renaissance, no
particular value was placed on literary invention. Quite to the contrary,
even when authors invented a story, they often claimed to have heard it
from ‘an authority’ or read it in a book. With the classical revival of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the number of possible ‘authorities’ in-
creased, and it became more important to use a philologically correct text.
But for all that, the dependence upon predecessors did not necessarily lessen,
as the prestige of ancient authors encouraged close imitation of their style.
To mention but one example, quite a few sixteenth-century writers dealing
with travel in their own times would feel the need to call contemporary
peoples by names taken from Greek or Roman sources. Thus the Turks
might be called Scythians, even though there is no link between the two
EU R OP EA N S OU R CE S ON OT TOM A N H IS TOR Y 127
supposed to be equally valid for the eighteenth as well. This claim is not
unjustified ipso facto, but must be treated with circumspection. Now that the
writings of Fernand Braudel have become part of the intellectual baggage of
quite a few non-historians, we have become aware that certain aspects of
social life moved very slowly, not only in the Middle East but in early
modern and even modern Europe as well (Braudel, 2nd edn, 1966). Thus it
no longer makes any sense to construct Middle Eastern ‘otherness’ on the
basis of an allegedly slow movement of history. To sum up, it is not
illegitimate to use accounts from different periods to elucidate those of
another, but the historian will need to exercise great care when doing so.
6
On Middle Eastern travellers’ views of Europe, one may read Lewis, 1982.
EU R OP EA N S OU R CE S ON OT TOM A N H IS TOR Y 129
modern European visitors brought along in their travelling kits, and which
conditioned their observations in Bursa, Aleppo, Sofia or Trabzon. French,
English, Italian or German travellers of that period generally expected a
major city to possess buildings several stories high. In part this was probably
due to the Roman traditions they had all imbibed; in the imperial period,
Rome contained numerous plots of land bordered by streets (insulae)
covered over with residential construction of six to seven storeys. Frequent-
ly, the wealthier inhabitants lived on the first floor, while the upper stories
were occupied by the poor; a comparable arrangement also existed in some
parts of eighteenth-century Paris. Moreover, in the core of the city, business
and residence were closely intertwined, with shops occupying the ground
floor and residences the remainder of the building. On a practical level, this
arrangement probably had something to do with the fact that until the
middle of the nineteenth century, most European cities were still sur-
rounded by walls. Outer suburbs existed, but wholesale building in the
unwalled areas was often forbidden for defensive reasons. High densities on
a small built-up area were the outcome, and a typical French or English
visitor to an Ottoman town would be on the lookout for evidence of similar
crowding (compare Braudel, 1979, vol. I, pp. 432ff).
Ottoman towns were however arranged according to different
considerations. Most of them possessed a citadel which might contain a
number of urban quarters. But at least in Anatolia, the commercial district
normally lay outside the citadel. Markets might be located in an undefended
lower town, probably because most urban sites were remote from endan-
gered frontiers. But even when a city wall might have seemed advisable for
security reasons, Ottoman townsmen – or the central administration for that
matter – rarely decided to defend the entire built-up area in this fashion.
Ankara constitutes one of the few, exceptional instances in which a new city
wall was built in the troubled years around 1600; even a century later, this
wall still protected the entire built-up space. By contrast, towns in coastal
and therefore exposed regions of western and southern Anatolia were rarely
protected by a full city wall. Whenever the situation became too dangerous,
such settlements therefore contracted until in the case of emergency, the
entire population could find refuge in the citadel (Stoianovich, 1970;
Ergenç, 1980; Faroqhi, 1984, pp. 23ff.).
As a result of these building patterns, the pressure on Ottoman
townsmen to construct a high-density urban core was, at least in the
sixteenth century, probably less urgent than in many parts of Europe.
Congestion was further relieved by the fact that so many commercial
buildings owned by pious foundations accommodated large numbers of
shops without adjacent residences. This meant that many tenants of such
130 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
shops living elsewhere, an Ottoman town spread out over a larger area than
its European counterpart, certainly an advantage given the rudimentary
sanitation technology of the times. But visitors such as Hans Dernschwam or
Petrus Gyllius seem to have felt that a town built of small, flatroofed houses
was somehow less of a town, and this opinion has strongly coloured their
perceptions (Dernschwam, ed. Babinger, 1923, p. 189).
On a more general level, the notions and prejudices about Turks
and Middle Easterners that European travellers subscribed to have also
influenced their judgments about Ottoman towns. In the sixteenth century
at least, most visitors were highly impressed by the Sultans’ military power.
To give but one example among many, Busbecq’s account is full of praise
EU R OP EA N S OU R CE S ON OT TOM A N H IS TOR Y 131
contrast, resentment and the feeling of being threatened seem to have played
a much stronger role in the world view of European travelogue writers:
Apparently the latter saw themselves as hampered in their movements and in
permanent danger, while from the wisdom of hindsight, we can see that
they themselves were actually doing most of the threatening.
Evliya’s account of his trip to Vienna contains quite a few tall
tales. As a result historians for a long time used to doubt that he had ever
been there, until documentary evidence of his presence was found in the
Austrian archives. It was understood but recently that even his most fan-
tastic tales were not gratuitous, but rather the outcome of his artistic,
moral and political intentions in writing his ten-volume travelogue. The
same thing, by the way, applies to his contemporaries the French, Italian
or English visitors to the Ottoman Empire, who also invented images
with the help of the more or less reliable data they had managed to
collect. Only in their case, it has taken present-day scholars a lot longer to
spot the myth-making.
did not mean that they saw these towns in quite the same fashion. Evliya
proceeded in a fairly systematic way; it was apparently his aim to visit all
Ottoman towns of any importance at least once. Both great cities and less
important places were described by the application of one and the same
mental questionnaire, in which public and private buildings played a central
role. Commerce was important, largely because it gave rise to such monu-
ments as khans and bedestans; but religious and military-administrative build-
ings were given pride of place. By contrast, Tavernier was interested only in
long-distance trade, and the conditions which furthered or prevented it.
When he described religious and other non-commercial public buildings, it
was usually a sideline. Either Tavernier’s trade had obliged him to spend
some time in the place in question, or the monuments he described were
connected with his Armenian business partners. Certainly Evliya’s subtext,
namely to exalt the glory of the Ottoman Empire through its cities, was
totally lacking in Tavernier’s case, and one encounters few instances in
which he expresses admiration for what he saw.
Yet Evliya’s relatively optimistic view of his own time does not
mean that he simply retailed illusions, the ‘rose-red’ counterparts to the
‘black’ image of decline popular among his European contemporaries. This
becomes obvious when comparing his description of the city of Urfa (Ruha)
to that of Tavernier. Both travellers saw the town in the 1640s, within a few
years of one another. Urfa had been hard hit by the Celali rebellions of the
late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when the rebel leader Kalen-
deroğlu had occupied the town (Akdağ, 1963, p. 211; Evliya Çelebi,
1314/1896–97, vol III, pp. 148–169; Tavernier, ed. Yérasimos, 1981, vol. I,
pp. 244–246). Evliya acknowledges this fact by stating that Urfa’s commer-
cial buildings were not very impressive, even though a large amount of
goods was (once again?) available there. Tavernier reports that a large
number of houses still lay in ruins, which is another facet of the same reality.
By stretching the point a little, we may conclude that both authors refer to
the damage Urfa had suffered in the Celali uprisings, but that Evliya is
interested in signs of recovery, while Tavernier remains non-committal on
this issue.
EU R OPE AN AR CH I VA L S OU RC E S: D EA LIN G W I TH
NI NE T EE N TH-CEN TURY CI TI E S
Up to this point, our focus has been on narrative sources from the
late sixteenth century to the eighteenth. However most of the European
evidence on the Ottoman Empire is not narrative at all, but archival. It has
been introduced briefly in chapter 3, and in an introductory text such as the
136 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
9. Salonica around 1900. Even though the port was being modernised and
nineteenth-century architecture was making an appearance (see buildings in
the foreground) the general atmosphere was still quite provincial.
COP I NG W ITH BI A SE S
Postcolonial historiography has made us aware of the problems
inherent in European accounts, both travelogues and scholarly disquisitions.
Self criticism on the part of the historical profession is certainly called for: we
have seen that the very concern for scholarly standards has blinded many
authors to the realities in front of their very eyes. Quite frequently, the
‘modern’ inhabitants of Anatolia, Egypt or Syria have paled into insignifi-
cance before the contemporaries of the Pharaohs or the representatives of
Biblical and classical antiquity. Moreover, this selective blindness was not
8
Among the five major port cities of the eastern Mediterranean, Izmir seems to be the locality with the
smallest amount of local documentation. This is in large part due to the fire which destroyed the city in
1922.
In a particularly eloquent fashion, the preface of Ilbert to his work on Alexandria voices the
emergence of sympathies with local society in the course of research (Ilbert, 1996).
EU R OP EA N S OU R CE S ON OT TOM A N H IS TOR Y 141
and/or tax farmers were often relayed and commented upon. Some invest-
ments in the local infrastructure were - to a degree - controlled by Ottoman
government agents, who could further or hinder the activities of foreign
merchants. As a result, the evaluation of the performance of the post-
Tanzimat bureaucracy may take up a lot of space in consular reports. Now
that we know from which point of view these evaluations were made, we
will be able to place them into perspective better, which in some cases may
mean that we simply discard them.
In addition, the archives contain quantitative evidence, which has
to be treated by simple statistical techniques before it can be of use to the
historian. From the eighteenth century onwards, this numerical evidence is
quite abundant. It is tempting to assume that these materials provide some
relief from the all-pervasive subjectivity of the travellers’ accounts and
consular reports. Yet we have already noted that quantitative evidence in
European archives, no less than its qualitative counterpart, reflects the
particular interests of merchants and consular officials, and must be evaluated
accordingly.
Economic historians have taken a long time to make allowance for
this situation. To mention but one example, goods neither imported nor
exported did not normally enter the sphere of interest of foreign merchants.
But Ottoman economic history, particularly where the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries were concerned, started life as a discipline largely based
upon European sources. This may help to explain why for a long time,
scholars have tended to underestimate the internal trade of the Ottoman
Empire, as it was not recorded in French or English archives. Recent
research has shown up the extent of this misconception, and now that
Ottoman documents are becoming accessible in ever increasing quantities,
we are, to some extent, able to avoid this particular bias (for a good example
of how this can be done, see Genç, 1987). By the same token, we have
become aware of the need to examine archival evidence just as critically as
literary materials.
SU GG E ST ED RE AD INGS
Aigen, Wolffgang (1980). Sieben Jahre in Aleppo (1656–1663), Ein Abschnitt aus den
‘Reiß-Beschreibungen’ des Wolffgang Aigen, ed. Andreas Tietze (Vienna: Verlag
der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften Österreichs) (Syrian commerce de-
scribed by a professional).
Beckingham, C. F. (1983). Between Islam and Christendom, Travellers, Facts and
EU R OP EA N S OU R CE S ON OT TOM A N H IS TOR Y 143
Legends in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London: Variorum Reprints)
(both critical and colourful).
Busbecq, Ogier Ghiselin de (1968). The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq,
Imperial Ambassador at Constantinople 1554 – 1562, tr. Edward Seymour Forster
(Oxford) (Sultan Süleyman’s empire as viewed by a humanistically trained
diplomat).
[Evliya Çelebi] (1990). Evliya Çelebi in Bitlis, The Relevant Section of the Seyahatname
edited with translation, commentary and introduction, ed. and tr. Robert Dankoff
(Leiden: E. J. Brill) (the traveller’s adventures at the court of the khan of Bitlis;
includes description of the town).
Gilles, Pierre (1988). The Antiquities of Constantinople, tr. John Ball and ed. by
Ronald G. Musto (New York: Italica Press) (‘period’ translation with a
modern introduction).
Gyllius, Petrus (1997). İ˙stanbul’un Tarihi Eserleri, tr. from the Latin original and
introduced by Erendiz Özbayoğlu (Istanbul: Eren) (completes the eighteenth-
century translation into English currently on the market).
Maundrell, Henry (reprint, 1963). A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem in 1697, ed.
David Howell (Beirut: Khayat) (well written).
Melman, Billie (1992). Women’s Orients, English Women and the Middle East
1718–1918, Sexuality, Religion and Work (London, Basingstoke: Macmillan)
(critical discussion of women’s writing on women).
Montague, Lady Mary Wortley (1993). Turkish Embassy Letters, ed. Anita Desai and
Malcolm Jack (London: Pickering) (the doyenne of women travellers: sophis-
ticated and thought-provoking).
Pedani Fabris, Maria Pia (1996). Relazione di ambasciatori veneti al senato, vol. xiv,
Costantinopoli (Padua: Bottega d’Erasmo and Aldo Ausilio) (hitherto unknown
relazioni).
Tavernier, Jean Baptiste (1981). Les six voyages en Turquie et en Perse, 2 vols.,
abridged and annoted by Stéphane Yérasimos (Paris: François Maspéro/La
Découverte) (important both for his impact on later European thinking on
‘Oriental despotism’ and for his great travel experience).
Yérasimos, Stéphane (1991). Les voyageurs dans l’empire ottoman (XIVe–XVIe siècles),
Bibliographie, itinéraires et inventaire des lieux habités (Ankara: Türk Tarih
Kurumu) (the standard work on the subject).
6
ON THE RULES OF WRITING (AND
R E A D I N G ) O T T OM A N H I S T O R I C A L
WORKS
DE LI NE A TIN G T HE T OPI C
In the present chapter we will deal with literary texts in the broadest sense of
the word. By the definition used here, the term ‘literary’ will denote texts
either written for the edification and enjoyment of a limited number of
readers, more or less known to the author, or for the eyes of an anonymous
public. This means that we are concerned with texts intended for publica-
tion. But since in the Ottoman world, the printing press did not come into
widespread use before the nineteenth century, the term ‘publication’ is also
in need of clarification. Writers and potential writers met in ‘salons’ (meclis)
where they might read their works or informally show their manuscripts to
their colleagues (Fleischer, 1986, pp. 22–3), one of the major disadvantages
which women needed to overcome being their lack of access to such
sessions. Presenting one’s work at a literary gathering should be regarded as a
form of publication, comparable to the reading of a paper at a scholarly
conference in our day. But as a more developed form of publication it was
customary to have an elaborate presentation copy prepared. This was
handed over to an influential patron, such as the Sultan himself, a vizier, or,
at least in the eighteenth century, a princess of the imperial family. The
recipient was expected to make the author a gift, usually the only direct
remuneration the latter might expect. From the reign of Bayezid II (r.
1481–1512) onwards, registers of gifts made by the Sultan have survived;
they mention a number of poets whose works must have been brought to
the attention of the ruler (Erünsal, 1977–79).
In an introductory volume it is impossible to survey all the literary
144
WRI TI N G, R E ADI N G OTT O MAN HI ST ORI C A L WO RKS 145
and accessible earlier beys with the elaborate court ceremonial of Sultan
Bayezid I (1389–1402). Or possibly some of these descriptions were int-
ended as indirect criticisms of Sultan Mehmed II (1451–1483), who govern-
ed the Ottoman Empire while the authors of the older surviving chronicles
were at work.
Establishing the links between different chroniclers has exercised
the ingenuity of philologically minded historians ever since the 1920s. But
the debate has been considerably advanced by two fairly recent contribu-
tions. Stéphane Yérasimos has examined a group of anonymous chroniclers
from the end of the fifteenth century, active under Mehmed the Con-
queror’s son Bayezid II (1481–1512) (Yérasimos, 1990). These authors
relayed a number of stories concerning the Aya Sofya, the former Hagia
Sophia recently turned into a mosque. Only some of these stories were
derived from mediaeval sources either Arab or Byzantine, while for others
no source has been located; probably they were fifteenth-century inven-
tions. With great ingenuity, Yérasimos has attempted to determine why
stories about pre-Ottoman Istanbul in general, and the Aya Sofya in particu-
lar, became popular among chroniclers at just this time. Several of these
anonymous writers depict the history of pre-Ottoman Istanbul as uniquely
catastrophic; it was the site of various crimes which the construction of the
Aya Sofya, perceived as the one major positive event in this sequence of
horrors, was unable to counterbalance.
Perhaps these writings should be linked to a political opposition
unable to articulate its major tenets in writing while the conquering Sultan
was still alive. But once Bayezid II, known for his disagreements with his
formidable father, had acceded to the throne, this opposition did produce a
few written statements, circulated anonymously for the sake of caution. In
Yérasimos’ view, the authors of these texts opposed Mehmed II’s ‘imperial
project’, and warned the ruling Sultan against its continuation. Instead of
defining himself as a world emperor and heir of infidel rulers, set apart by an
elaborate court ceremonial, the Ottoman Sultan was admonished to revive
the less formalised court life of his more remote ancestors. Or as an
alternative, he might follow the example of the four early Caliphs, the
immediate successors of the Prophet Muhammad. This political agenda is
not overtly expressed in the surviving texts, and its very existence therefore
open to debate. But at the present stage of our understanding, an emerging
discussion concerning the future fate of Istanbul can be regarded as a most
stimulating hypothesis.
Both Yérasimos and Cemal Kafadar, who in a recent study has
produced a sophisticated evaluation of Ottoman fifteenth-century chron-
WRI TI N G, R E ADI N G OTT O MAN HI ST ORI C A L WO RKS 147
FA C TI ON AL S T RU GG LE A ND M I LIT AR Y
P RE P A R ED NE SS : SO ME S A M P L ES O F ‘ A D VI C E ’
LIT ER AT U RE
As we have seen, Mustafa Âli made a major contribution to this
genre by adapting the old Turco-Islamic version of ‘advice to rulers’ to late
sixteenth-century circumstances (on the origins of the genre see the article
‘Nası hat al-mulu k’ in EI, 2nd edn, by C. E. Bosworth). In mediaeval
˙˙
writings of this kind, it had been customary to give general advice to rulers
on the manner in which they should conduct their affairs. However the
numerous representatives of this genre in the Ottoman world of the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries geared their advice rather to specific crisis
situations. Thus Aziz Efendi, whose official responsibilities had long in-
cluded the relations with Kurdish beys along the Iranian frontier, in late 1632
advocated a conciliatory policy toward these potentates: as staunch Sunnis,
they could be valuable allies in the campaign for the reconquest of Bagdad
which Murad IV was then preparing (Murphey ed., 1985; Howard, 1988).
Other tracts of political advice refer to the parlous state of the
military tax assignments (timar), which from the late sixteenth century
onward, were increasingly reassigned to servitors of the central administra-
tion or else to tax farmers. For as the military utility of the timar-holding
cavallerists declined, the Ottoman financial administration showed no sus-
tained interest in the continuing solvency of timar holders. However in the
view of many authors of advice memoranda, the timar had been the symbol
of Ottoman prowess, and its abandonment was viewed as both cause and
symptom of ‘decline’. In this divergence of practice and ideology Douglas
Howard sees a clash between ‘reality’ and ‘ideals’. Not rarely, the much-
vaunted principle that taxpaying subjects should not be permitted to enter
the military was overridden by the need to reward service in the Ottoman
armed forces by granting timars (Howard, 1988, p. 68).
By the eighteenth century, the timar was no longer a central con-
cern of the writers of advice literature. Now the debate rather concerned
such matters as the avoidance of wars for which the Ottoman military was
insufficiently prepared, and the extent to which ‘infidel’ novelties might be
used by Ottoman soldiers (Aksan, 1993). In surveying this debate, it seems
important to keep in mind a point once made by Rifa¨at Abou-El-Haj,
namely that the advice given by memoranda writers was informed by their
position within (or outside of) the Ottoman bureaucracy (Abou-El-Haj,
152 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
1991, pp. 24–8). Officials attempting to outmanoeuvre their rivals might use
the arsenal of ‘political advice to rulers’ as a weapon against their opponents.
In consequence, the modern historian should use this material with a critical
mind. This statement needs underscoring, for ‘corruption’ and ‘decline’
have long been favourite topoi not only of seventeenth-century Ottoman
‘advice’ literature, but also of both modern Turkish and European-Ameri-
can historiography.
the Lawgiver was regarded as the model Ottoman Sultans were supposed to
imitate, Ahmed Resmi’s statement constituted a bold departure from the
conventions of advice literature. His advocacy of peace as a major asset and
his insistence upon the need to stay within ‘natural boundaries’ implied the
assumption that the fortunes of war were determined by this-worldly
strategies and resources. In Ahmed Resmi’s view, one could not rely on a
quasi-automatic expansion of the Islamic realm (Aksan, 1995, pp.
195–205).2
the Ottoman Empire, which encompasses the period from 1774 to 1826. It
was commissioned by the textbook task force cum academy of sciences
known as the Encümen-i Daniş (Neumann, 1994, pp. 17ff.; this book
contains information on the publishing history of Cevdet Paşa’s works).
Throughout his work, Ahmed Cevdet was concerned with making
the wars and diplomatic crises of the period discussed intelligible to his
readers. He therefore devoted a major section of the fifth volume of his
history to the political history of Europe, with special emphasis on the
French Revolution. This interest in the changed international context in
which the Ottoman Empire now needed to operate has been regarded not
only as a methodological innovation, but also as an indicator of Cevdet
Paşa’s political agenda. After having lived through the mid-century restruc-
turing of the Ottoman state, known as the Tanzimat, its legitimation
through historiography apparently formed a major part of Ahmed Cevdet’s
intentions (Neumann, 1994, pp. 278–83).
By discussing political constellations and military campaigns in
context, Ahmed Cevdet also came to introduce a number of formal innova-
tions into the chronicle genre. Thus at least in certain sections, he aban-
doned the convention of discussing events year by year, with lists of official
appointments and obituaries at the end of each section, a format characteris-
tic of the Ottoman tradition of history writing (Neumann, 1994, p. 33).
Instead, appendices containing primary sources were attached to certain
volumes; older authors, if they had wished to include such material, had
normally integrated it into the text of the narration. Moreover, Ahmed
Cevdet, though thoroughly familiar with the elevated Ottoman language in
which such chronicles had generally been composed ever since the sixteenth
century, himself wrote in a language fairly close to the educated speech of his
day. He was very conscious of the fact, and justified this break with tradition
by the need to be accessible to a broader spectrum of readers (Neumann,
1994, p. 26).
ward Turkish. But from the sixteenth century onward, the use of literary
Ottoman became more widespread. In particular, certain eighteenth-cen-
tury chroniclers are known for their elaborate style and Arabo-Persian
vocabulary, which made their texts inaccessible to all but the most highly
educated. But even authors who favoured this literary style – and there were
gradations even in the seventeenth or eighteenth century – did not necessar-
ily use it from beginning to end in their books. Elevated style might thus
serve to emphasise certain sections of a chronicle. In the nineteenth century,
as we have seen, the use of elaborate style came to be questioned, first by
authors who aimed at a wider public and later, in the last decades of the
empire, by nationalists wishing to get rid of non-Turkish words. Unfortu-
nately, the number of chronicle studies taking account of literary style is as
yet quite limited, so that it is difficult to make definite statements on the
evolution of chronicles from the stylistic point of view (for an exception, see
H. Lamers in Van Bruinessen and Boeschoten eds., 1988, pp. 62–70).
On the other hand, certain conventions remained constant through-
out the centuries. Authors proceeded year by year and used the reigns of
individual Sultans as the basic grid for the organisation of their narrative
material. We have noted how Ahmed Cevdet wrestled with this convention
when he wished to discuss long-term developments. Another constant was
the use of the chronicle as a vehicle of political comment and criticism
directed at the author’s own time. We have seen that the story of the early
Sultans as relayed by fifteenth-century chroniclers was largely governed by
such considerations, while nineteenth-century authors such as Ahmed Cev-
det and his conservative successor Ahmed Lütfi used their respective his-
tories to debate the merits of the Tanzimat (Neumann, 1994, p. 46).
CH RO NI CLE S I N TH E PR OVIN C ES
Ottoman authors who tried to make their way in Istanbul usually
had little incentive to discuss provincial concerns. But a number of chron-
icles, recounting events in a single city or province, do survive. One of the
oldest is the seventeenth-century account of life in Serres (today Serrai in
Greek Thrace) by a priest named Papa Synadinos. This text relays local
events such as famines and epidemics, the arrival of bishops and assorted
disputes within the Orthodox community. The author did not hesitate to
include information appropriate to a family memorial; thus we hear about
his marriage or the births and deaths of his children. Moreover, Synadinos
compiled short biographies of Serres Orthodox notables, organised accord-
ing to the years of their deaths as was also common in chronicles written by
Muslims. However, he was less restrained in his comments than the writers
WRI TI N G, R E ADI N G OTT O MAN HI ST ORI C A L WO RKS 159
of the more formal texts composed in Istanbul, freely relaying not only the
virtues, but also the vices and weaknesses of the persons concerned. We
learn a great deal about the more or less crooked deals involving the finances
of the Serres Orthodox community, nor are deficiencies in the training of
local priests passed over in silence (Odorico et al. eds., 1996. pp. 71–9,
compare also Strauß, to be published).
Even though Papa Synadinos wrote in Greek, his work in certain
respects can thus be viewed as part of Ottoman culture in the broader sense
of the word. In this short introduction, it is unfortunately impossible to
discuss more than a small sample of such provincial writings, especially
abundant in eighteenth-century Syria.3 Mı kha © ı Burayk, strongly ecclesias-
tical in orientation, often mentioned his links to Mount Athos, and may
have been inspired by Balkan historiography (Masters, 1994). Burayk was an
ardent adherent of the Orthodox church and strongly resentful of the
activities of Roman Catholic missionaries gathering adherents among the
Christians of eighteenth-century Syria. By contrast Yu suf ¨Abbu d, who
wrote in Aleppo during the early nineteenth century, was a merchant and an
adherent of the movement of Catholic reform, but whose perspective
reached beyond ecclesiastical events. Among Syrian Muslims, Ahmad al-
˙
Budayri is supposed to have been a barber and member of a sufi brotherhood
in Damascus. Unfortunately, his work, covering events in his home town,
has survived only in an edition by a mid nineteenth century scholar. Hasan
˙
Agha al-¨Abid was a military man whose responsibilities included the safety
of the hajj route. His chronicle is more concerned with political events than
is true of the other three accounts. Its value lies in the fact that Hasan Agha
˙
relays the view of a man with ample experience of rural Syria, especially the
desert routes (Masters, 1994).
All four chronicles, but especially the first three, have been mined
by twentieth-century historians for ‘facts’, but have also been analysed for
the cultural attitudes inherent in them. Thus the narrative of ¨Abbu d has
been extensively used in a major monograph on eighteenth-century Aleppo
(Marcus, 1989). All four texts contain a great deal of evidence on the
attitudes of Ottoman provincials toward the powers that be, both governors
and judiciary. Here there was considerable common ground between Mus-
lims and Christians. But perspectives were similar even beyond the realm of
the ‘political’ in the narrow sense of the term. Thus the misogyny of the
Orthodox priest Burayk, always ready to blame the women of his own
3
I thank Arifa Ramovič for pointing out the existence of a local chronicle concerning eighteenth-
century Sarajevo, written in Ottoman but to date published only in a Serbo-Croatian translation
(Bašeskiya, ed. Mujezinovič, 1968).
160 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
community for whatever misfortunes might befall the Orthodox, has been
viewed as an example of the patriarchal values shared by Muslims and
Christians (Masters, 1994).
ern scholars have usually mined Evliya’s work is incidental to his purposes
(Haarmann, 1976, p. 169).
Evliya Çelebi may have hoped that sorting out the factual from the
imaginary would amuse his readers (Haarmann, 1976, p. 168). But before
the middle of the nineteenth century, only very few people seem to have
read his writings. This lack of interest may be due to the difficulty of placing
Evliya’s work in any literary genre known at the time. Ottoman literature
before the late eighteenth century knew only a few travel accounts, and the
narratives of professional story-tellers (meddah), which visibly inspired much
of Evliya’s work, did not form part of written culture. In addition, the
traveller’s decision to write in an educated but conversational language may
also have lowered his prestige, at least before writers began to change their
minds on this issue during the second half of the nineteenth century. Evliya’s
work also included a much broader spectrum of human types than a more
conventional Ottoman literary man would have considered appropriate.
The craftsmen, merchants, nomads on the hajj route and rebellious soldiers
populating his narrative were distinctly beyond the pale of polite society.
Last but not least, Evliya’s decision to make travelling his chief aim in life,
without legitimising this activity by major religious and political motives,
must have struck his readers as incomprehensible. Quite conceivably he was
regarded as a man who refused the obligation of serving the Sultan, which
birth and training had placed upon him, and instead wasted his time on
trivialities.
1989). There seem to exist both ideological and technical reasons for the
long neglect of texts narrated in the first person. On the ideological plane,
European scholars until quite recently have tended to think that first-person
narrative is linked to ‘individualism’. ‘Individualism’ and ‘enlightenment’,
however, are regarded as specifically European values, which cannot be
found in and should not be attributed to non-European cultures.4 More-
over, these assumptions often have been endorsed by Turkish writers, many
of whom until recently also regarded values such as religion, nationalism or
left-wing opinions much more highly than the expression of personal
experiences.
But the technical difficulties involved in the search for first-person
narratives should not be underestimated either. Texts relaying personal
experiences have rarely been copied, and therefore in most cases are avail-
able only in a single manuscript. Even worse, such a manuscript may not be
extant as a separate volume, but form part of a set of miscellanea bound
together (mecmua). Such manuscripts, often of extremely diverse content,
are notoriously hard to catalogue, and some cataloguers will only record a
selection of the works contained in the manuscripts they describe. Certain
mecmuas may therefore well contain unsuspected treasures, and it is quite
possible that totally unknown texts written in the first person will emerge in
the future.
Among diary, memoir and letter-writers active down to the Tan-
zimat, we encounter people from different walks of life, ranging from a
şeyhülislam to a junior military officer. From the sixteenth century, the most
remarkable text of this type is doubtlessly the autobiography of the Chief
Architect Mimar Sinan, which, in old age, he dictated to his friend Sâı̂
Mustafa Çelebi (for a publication of the Topkapı Sarayı manuscript and
references to earlier publications compare Saatçı, 1990; see also Meriç,
1965). Apart from reporting his diverse professional experiences before
becoming the Chief Architect, Sinan’s account is memorable for its frank
discussion of the author’s disputes with powerful personages. For as a
janissary officer Sinan fell out with his patron the Grand Vizier over the
question whether a bridge he had just built should be fortified or not. The
disagreement resulted in Sinan’s leaving the janissary corps and becoming a
professional architect. More serious was his conflict with Sultan Süleyman,
who in the course of his long reign, gave Sinan many of his major commis-
sions. If the old architect’s memory was not too treacherous, he seems to
have emerged from this conflict as the winner. Sinan’s autobiography
4 While these assumptions today carry less conviction among specialists, they are still very prevalent in
publications catering for a wider audience.
WRI TI N G, R E ADI N G OTT O MAN HI ST ORI C A L WO RKS 165
of murderous attack in 1703, his nepotism was one of the main points held
against him. Feyzullah Efendi thus must have practised family advancement
in a way that aroused hostility, possibly because his strategies were spectacu-
larly successful, at least for a time. Incidentally Feyzullah Efendi does not
indicate in any way that he was aware of the dangers threatening himself and
his family.
Due to the work of Cemal Kafadar, we have already been able to
introduce two further seventeenth-century figures who wrote about them-
selves (Kafadar, 1989, 1992). One of them is the dervish Seyyid Hasan
Efendi, whose account constitutes a unique source for everyday life among
the propertied classes of seventeenth-century Istanbul. The other text was
authored by the only woman of the pre-Tanzimat period whose first-person
prose has been published to date, namely Afife Hatun, the female Halveti
dervish of Üsküp. From a slightly later period dates the account of Osman
Ağa, a junior officer. Captured in 1688, during the Habsburg–Ottoman war
of 1683–1699, he did not return to the Ottoman lands until the end of the
fighting (Ottoman text, publ. Kreutel, 1980; for a very readable German
translation, see Osman Ağa, tr. Kreutel and Spies, 1962).
After the middle of the nineteenth century, personal accounts get
somewhat more frequent. We will take a brief look at three examples that
have been well studied, namely the memoirs of Leyla (after the adoption of
surnames: Saz), the autobiography of Aşçıbaşı Ibrahim Dede and the mem-
oirs of the reforming Grand Vizier Midhat Paşa, which we know only in the
shape given to them by the latter’s son. Leı la Hanoum (1850–1936), as she is
known to the readers of the French version of her book produced by her son
Yusuf Razi (Leı la Hanoum, tr. Youssouf Razi, 1991; the Turkish version,
bearing the title ‘Harem ve saray adat-i kadimesi’ was first published as a
serial in the daily paper Vakit in 1921), was unusually gifted in both poetry
and music (Sagaster, 1989, pp. 18–23). Her memoirs were written twice, the
extant version having been reconstructed by herself after a fire had destroyed
an earlier manuscript before it could be published. But even this first version
probably had been written decades after the events it describes, and Leyla
Saz was herself acutely conscious of the problems involved. Her principal
aim was not to write an autobiography, but to instruct her readers about an
institution, namely the Sultan’s Harem, on which there was little reliable
information. The author thus provides detailed descriptions of furniture and
decor. But since a young child presumably did not pay much attention to
such matters, Leyla Saz must have collected this information at a later date.
She does in fact recount having questioned people who had been in the
Imperial Harem at the same time as she was. In the published (second)
WRI TI N G, R E ADI N G OTT O MAN HI ST ORI C A L WO RKS 167
version of her story, which she had put together from memory when she
was in her later sixties, she laments the fact that around 1920, there were no
more people living who could have provided details she had forgotten (ed.
Youssouf Razi, 1991, pp. xli, 3).
A much longer testimony, reflecting the lives of less highly placed
members of the Ottoman bureaucracy, can be found in the memoirs of the
civilian army employee Ibrahim b Mehmed Ali (1828–around 1910). Out-
side office hours, this writer pursued a sufi life in various Mevlevi and
Nakşbendi lodges, and is known by the title of Asçıbaşı Dede. His memoirs
have been intensively studied (Bremer, 1959; Findley 1983 and 1989), but,
possibly due to their great length, only partially published (ed. Koçu, 1960;
Bremer, 1959 contains a summary in German). İbrahim Dede has given a
detailed account of his career, including the networks which he developed
through marriage, personal service to highly placed officials, and activity in
dervish orders. The author did not belong to an elite family and was not
highly educated, neither in the established Ottoman style nor in the French-
inspired mode that was gaining in career usefulness during the second half of
the nineteenth century (Findley, 1989, p. 180). But judicious use of the
contacts available permitted him a respectable career, for he had reached the
rank of examining clerk (mümeyyiz) in the headquarters of the Second
Army, before retiring in 1906, when approaching his eightieth birthday.
The last example to be briefly introduced here is the
‘Müdafaaname’ (‘Book of Defence’) by Midhat Paşa. This text is known to
us through an edition by Midhat Paşa’s son Ali Haydar Midhat (for bibli-
ographical information, see Davison, 1995, p.65). The latter, while in
European exile, published a biography of his father in order to vindicate
Midhat Paşa’s policies, basing himself not only on the ‘Müdafaaname’, but
also on other documents which had been in his father’s possession. Both
Midhat Paşa’s own work and that of his son had political aims, namely to
defend the former Grand Vizier against the accusations of the tribunal which
had ended the career of the man to whom the Ottoman Empire owed its
first constitution. In that sense the Midhat Paşa memoirs as edited by his son
constitute one of the first examples of a new mode of writing, namely
memoirs written by political figures as a form of self-advertisement and
self-defence. As this genre was to flourish in the Ottoman Empire after
1908, as it did in Europe and America, the work of the two Midhats must be
viewed as pioneering (Davison, 1995, pp.76–78).
168 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
onward, it was hampered by censorship rules not only strict but also often
unforeseeable in their application. But that was by no means the only
difficulty. Given the condition of the roads, it was frequently impossible to
bring the papers to out-of-town subscribers within reasonable delays. More-
over, periodicals were available in many coffeehouses, so that the number of
individual purchasers was cut down even further. Only in important provin-
cial cities, such as Salonica, Izmir or Beirut, did the relative isolation of
readers from the publishing life of the capital permit the development of a
lively local press.
Yet in spite of these difficulties, publishing expanded during the last
quarter of the nineteenth century. While in Europe, publishing houses long
had preceded the emergence of newspapers, in the Ottoman context, it was
only the growing demand for newspapers which made the publishing
business viable (Koloğlu, 1992 b). During the last decades of the nineteenth
century, we also encounter the beginnings of specialised journals, dealing
with literature or even philosophy. In some instances, a journal first int-
ended for general circulation gradually might develop a special focus. Thus
the composer Sadeddin (Arel) during the years preceding World War I
edited the bi-weekly Şehbal, modelled on French publications such as
L’illustration, but increasingly emphasising music. Before the journal ceased
publication at the advent of World War I, it had pioneered the new genre of
music criticism, organising competitions to find Ottoman words for such
novelties as public concerts (Prätor, 1997).
Among the specialist journals, those intended for women have
recently attracted some attention. This is due to the activities of scholars
with a feminist bent, fascinated by the discovery that a section at least of
upper- and middle-class Ottoman women did not passively await the
reforms of the early republican period (Çakır, 1994). Quite to the contrary,
some of these women took the initiative and campaigned for the improve-
ment of educational and professional opportunities, even though they were
usually careful to ‘dress up’ their demands in suitably altruistic language. The
advancement of the younger generation and later, the greater good of the
nation constituted favourite legitimising arguments. This kind of rhetoric
was all the more persistent as many publications directed at women were
written largely by men, the only periodical with an all-women staff being
Kadınlar Dünyası (Çakır, 1994).
Even under these restrictive circumstances, a few women, some-
times quite young, were able to try their hand at journalism and embark on a
professional career in this field. As a notable example one might cite Halide
Edip (later: Adivar), who went on to become a novelist, and in her later
170 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
SU GG E ST ED RE AD ING
DE LI MI TI N G T HE C ORP US OF TE X TS
This chapter is certainly not meant to be a comprehensive and
systematic discussion of the manner in which the Ottoman Empire has been
perceived in the course of time. Such a topic could easily fill a volume all by
itself. More modestly, we will limit ourselves to books written during a
relatively short timespan, roughly speaking, the last forty-five years. More-
over, the plot does not really thicken until after 1970. At this time Ottoman
studies seem to have matured as a discipline, and at least a few Ottomanists
began to think they might have something to contribute to the understand-
ing of world history1.
Since we are here concerned with the history of Ottoman history-
writing, the relevant works have been discussed for the most part in the
order of their appearance. However, to avoid losing sight of thematic
connections among our texts, a grouping by major topics intersects with the
chronological order. In the majority of cases, the first edition has been taken
as the basis for classification. But when a later edition has been much
amended, in fairness to the author this later text has usually been preferred.
Due to the roughly chronological arrangement, we can conveniently high-
light the dependence of a given author on his/her predecessors.
In order to delimit a corpus of texts indicating the development of
our field, we will concentrate on general works, both single and multi-
volume. The period of Ottoman history discussed in the publications to be
selected for analysis should be at least a century long. Sections of more
1 But this may well be an optical illusion, an outcome of the fact that my own active participation in the
field began at about this time.
174
OTT OM A N E M P IR E T HR OU GH G E NE RAL HI ST O RIES 175
2 Due to the tyrannical requirements of brevity, French and German publications will be signalled in the
reading list along with short comments, rather than discussed in the body of the text. It is most
regrettable that I do not read Russian and am therefore unable to evaluate the works published in that
language.
176 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
been included and another left out. Obviously, subjective factors do play a
part, and I do not claim to have found the optimal solution.3
FR OM TH E E ND OF WO RL D WA R II TO 19 70
We will begin our bird’s eye view of overall Ottoman histories with
the works of Ismail Hakkı Uzunçarş¸ılı. Among his major undertakings
figures a four-volume history of the Ottoman Empire, which for the
nineteenth century was complemented, in three volumes, by Enver Ziya
Karal. Since volumes III and IV of Uzunçarş¸ılı’s work consist of two parts
each, published under separate covers, the number of volumes written by
Uzunçarş¸ılı, as they actually appear on the shelf, is six instead of four (2nd
printing, 1977–1983). The narrative is organised by reigns of sultans. Cam-
paigns are given pride of place; at appropriate points, the chronological
sequence is interrupted to make room for the discussion of the empire’s
foreign relations, with the material organised state by state. These chapters,
which can be found especially in the second section of the third and fourth
volumes, discuss agreements with foreign rulers. These sections also contain
biographical data on Ottoman officials. The model of Ottoman chronicle
design remains visible in the background of Uzunçarş¸ılı’s work.
In addition, this author has produced a series of books on five major
branches of the Ottoman administration, namely the janissaries and other
military corps on the central government’s payroll (Uzunçarş¸ılı, 2 vols.,
1943; 1944), the Palace (Uzunçarş¸ılı, 1945), the central government itself
and the navy (Uzunçarş¸ılı, 1948; the section on the navy now to be
supplemented by Bostan, 1992; on finances, see Tabakoğ˘lu, 1985; Cezar,
1986; Darling, 1996). Almost twenty years later, Uzunçarş¸ılı completed the
series with a study of the religious cum legal scholars who staffed the
Ottoman courts and institutions of higher learning (Uzunçarş¸ılı, 1965).
Moreover, the whole series is introduced by a volume giving the reader a
bird’s eye view of Ottoman state organisation (Uzunçarş¸ılı, 1941c).
Uzunçarş¸ılı was an active professor-politician, whose formidable
strength lay in his extensive knowledge of archival materials. Equally im-
pressive was his commitment; his last publication of an Ottoman document
was mailed to the journal Belgeler on the very day of his death (Uzunçarş¸ılı,
1981–86). The principal weakness of his studies of Ottoman administration
3 As the Ottoman sections in the Middle Eastern histories of Lapidus and Hourani only consist of about
50–60 pages each, they have not been included here (Lapidus, 1988; Hourani, 1991). The same thing
applies to Geoffrey Lewis’ work on the republic of Turkey, where the section on Ottoman history is
also but 50 pages long (G. Lewis, 3rd ed. 1965). Stoianovich’s recent study has been excluded because
of its heavy emphasis on post-1918 developments (Stoianovich, 1994) . In addition, some works may
have been inadvertently overlooked.
OTT OM A N E M P IR E T HR OU GH G E NE RAL HI ST O RIES 177
edn, 1998). This is a teaching aid intended for survey courses of twentieth-
century history, but about one half of the volume is dedicated to the
Ottoman empire. Davison’s perspective is comparable to that of Lewis (and
numerous other scholars), as Ottoman developments are discussed as a
necessary preliminary to the history of modern Turkey. Where the pre-
Tanzimat period is concerned, Davison, as a specialist on the nineteenth
century, cannot but echo the results and perspectives put forward by his
contemporaries, particularly that tarte à la crème of 1960s scholars, namely
‘Ottoman decline’. But for the nineteenth century, and also for the crisis-
ridden last years of the Empire’s existence, Davison has produced a very
readable account, whose enduring popularity is demonstrated by the nu-
merous editions and reprints which this book has enjoyed. In the most
recent version, an attempt has been made to modernise the bibliography,
but this does not really change the book’s character as a ‘period piece’.4
TH E 19 7 0 s A N D 1 98 0s
From the very beginnning of our period (1970) dates the publica-
tion of The Cambridge History of Islam in two massive volumes, edited by
Peter Holt, Ann K. S. Lambton and Bernard Lewis. In the first volume, the
Ottoman Empire has been allotted a prominent role, with three contribu-
tions on political history by Halil Inalcık, and further articles by Uriel Heyd
and Peter Holt. By contrast, in the section concerning Islamic society and
civilisation, Ottomanists are not much represented, with literature the only
aspect of Ottoman culture allowed a separate article (Iz, 1970). To some
extent, this reflects the state of research in the 1960s, when the study of
Ottoman art was still struggling for recognition as a separate discipline, and
specialists on the Arab world and Iran dominated the study of Middle
Eastern culture.
In 1976, Inalcık’s article from The Cambridge History, along with
contributions by Vernon J. Parry, Akdes Nimet Kurat and J. S. Bromley to
the New Cambridge Modern History were issued as a separate volume. This
included a new introduction by Michael A. Cook, who provided an
elegantly formulated short text on what one might call the ‘Ottoman
legitimacy deficit’. This text explains how Central Asian royal traditions, the
yasa (laws) of Cengiz Han and Islamic concepts concerning the caliphate all
legitimised only certain aspects of the Ottoman sultanate. Thus authors
exalting Ottoman rule were obliged to circumvent the trouble spots as best
they could. However Cook’s and Inalcık’s contributions apart, the texts in
4 Clement Dodd’s reworking concentrates on the history of republican Turkey, so that the most recent
edition includes developments of the 1990s.
182 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
this volume are for the most part purely narrative, without the analytical
component which the beginning pages of the volume would lead one to
expect (Parry, Cook et al. (eds.), 1976).
In 1973–74, there appeared one of the major syntheses of overall
Middle Eastern history published to date, namely the three-volume Venture
of Islam by the Chicago scholar Marshall Hodgson. However, Hodgson died
before completing the third volume, dealing with ‘The Gunpowder Em-
pires and Modern Times’, that is the Ottoman, Safavi and Mughul empires.
His friends and colleagues were able to locate enough drafts to put together
the third volume. But it must always be kept in mind that Hodgson did not
live to impart a final shape to his text.
Many Ottomanists have responded favourably to Hodgson’s idea
that the Ottoman, Safavi and Mughul empires, which all governed large
territories for relatively long periods of time, had a common technological
basis in an expert use of firearms (see for example Inalcık, 1975). Scholars of
the pre-Hodgson generation had never given much thought to structural
parallels between, for instance, Ottoman and Mughul techniques of rule.
Gunpowder use apart, if today a consideration of possible structural parallels
between the Ottoman, Safavi and Mughul empires has entered the agenda at
least of a few historians, this is largely due to the impact of Hodgson’s work.
In 1976, there appeared the first comprehensive account of the
Ottoman world to be attempted in several decades, namely the two-volume
History of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey by Stanford Shaw; the
second volume was coauthored with Ezel Kural Shaw. While the first
volume treated the Ottoman Empire prior to the Tanzimat, the second
discussed the final decades of the Empire’s existence and the history of the
Republic down to 1975. Before publishing this volume, Shaw had made a
name for himself as an expert on Ottoman Egypt. He had explored the
workings of the provincial administrative structure, virtually a terra incognita
at the time, and published a sixteenth-century budget of Ottoman Egypt
(Shaw, 1962, 1968). But apart from these studies concerning a very import-
ant, but also very special, Ottoman province, Shaw was essentially interested
in the period of ‘reforms’ inspired by European examples, which the
Ottoman governing class attempted from the eighteenth century onward.
This may explain why the first edition of the first volume, which covered
earlier periods of Ottoman history, contained more than its fair share of
errors. But also where overall views of Ottoman history were concerned,
the first volume suffered from the fact that the author had little first-hand
experience with the history of the Ottoman ‘core area’ before 1800. These
blind spots have earned Shaw harsh criticism, especially from experts on the
OTT OM A N E M P IR E T HR OU GH G E NE RAL HI ST O RIES 183
conversion processes underway, the poll tax paid by the Christian popula-
tion still constituted one of the major sources of government revenue. Thus
there was little inducement for administrators to reduce revenues by enforc-
ing mass conversion. For the most part, the latter took place on the
‘non-official’ level. In the wake of Hasluck, Köprülü, Barkan and Vryonis,
Sugar highlights the activity of colonising dervishes, who were willing to
accommodate the folk beliefs of populations long estranged from the ‘high-
cultural’ version of Orthodoxy, and thus won over the hearts and minds of
local people to Islam (Hasluck, 1929; Köprülü, 1966b; Barkan, 1942;
Vryonis, 1971).
In all this, Sugar for the most part follows what has become the
majority opinion of the Ottomanist community. His personal views are
more apparent in his evaluation of the effects of Ottoman administration.
While most Ottomanists have emphasised the Sultans’ capacity to develop
an intricately organised governmental system that survived several centuries,
Sugar sees this matter in a rather different light. In the author’s perspective,
‘overadministration’ to the contrary may have constituted the Ottoman
régime’s major weakness. A set of stringent rules and regulations, minutely
enforced, tended to make life rather dull and monotonous for the Sultan’s
subjects, especially for non-Muslims. This monotony may have contributed
substantially to the disaffection even of the most unambitious and un-
demanding of Balkan Christian peasants (pp. 34, 110).
There is little doubt that this view of the motivations of sixteenth-
or seventeenth-century Balkan villagers, about which we have almost no
direct evidence, is highly speculative. A twentieth-century citizen’s frustra-
tion with constant bureaucratic interference doubtlessly plays a major role in
the genesis of Sugar’s interpretation. Elements of the ‘American dream’ are
not absent either. Whether this construct has a basis in seventeenth-century
reality, is another matter entirely.
Also in 1977, the American Balkanists Charles and Barbara Jelavich
published a history of the Balkan states in the ‘long’ nineteenth century
(1804–1920). It appeared in the same series as Sugar’s work, and therefore
shares the overall format: approximate length, the preference for a bibli-
ographical essay instead of a conventional bibliography and limited footnot-
ing. But while Sugar’s work is oriented toward Ottoman life, the Jelaviches’
volume shares Stavrianos’ focus upon Balkan nationalism, making little
attempt to discuss the Ottoman point of view. However, the authors do give
a balanced account of the violence which accompanied the dissolution of
the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. Thus we hear not only of the Ottoman
massacre on Chios (1822), immortalised by Eugène Delacroix’ painting, but
OTT OM A N E M P IR E T HR OU GH G E NE RAL HI ST O RIES 185
Mahmud II’s accession to the throne. A second chapter deals with early
Balkan nationalism, under the evocative title the ‘modern period of Otto-
man nations’. Ortaylı then addresses the dominance of the Grand Vizier’s
office (Bab-ı Ali, or Sublime Porte) and its centralist policies during the early
stage of the state restructuring known as the Tanzimat. A section called the
‘impasse of the reformers’ contains an analysis of the tension between a
society which changed but slowly, both in the economic and the demo-
graphic sense of the term, and a bureaucracy aiming at fairly rapid reforms. A
final chapter is dedicated to the intellectual world of the new-style Ottoman
officials.
Ortaylı’s study is based on a ‘classical’ concept of modernisation.
But its strength lies not so much in the construction of models as in the
breadth of the author’s perspective and information. Reading Russian and
familiar with research on Russian history, a rare achievement among Ot-
tomanist historians of any nationality, Ortaylı refuses to demonise the
Czarist empire. By stressing the local roots of Balkan nationalism he asserts
that these were not a simple Russian or other ploy, but possessed a legit-
imacy of their own. The same matter-of-fact approach is apparent in his
dicussion of economic mentality. Ortaylı links phenomena such as the long
survival of Ottoman guilds not to immemorial habits of thought, as was
common enough among older historians, but more straightforwardly, to
conjunctural factors (Ortaylı, 1983, pp. 152–3).
For the Ottomanist, the section of Vryonis’ work dealing with the
reactions of late Byzantine writers to the loss of Anatolia is of special interest.
Also relevant is the last chapter, dealing with the Byzantine residues in
Ottoman Anatolia, some of which survived down to the Greco-Turkish
exchange of populations in 1923. Vryonis used Turkish secondary literature
in the preparation of his work, and thus was one of the first scholars to
acknowledge that the Byzantino-Ottoman transition period needed to be
studied from the Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman angles. This was a fertile
departure, which in the next generation was to result in a well-cultivated
field known as Byzantino-Ottoman transition studies. When set against this
innovation, it is probably less relevant that something resembling ‘Byzantine
nationalism’ is discernible on many pages of Vryonis’ book.
Two years later, there appeared another study which has continued
to shape our perceptions of the early Ottoman period, namely Halil Inalcık’s
account of the empire’s ‘classical age’ (1300–1600). By a seminal article on
‘Ottoman methods of conquest’, in addition to a series of studies on
fifteenth-century trade and Ottoman control of the Black Sea, Inalcık had
established himself as the foremost specialist on early Ottoman history as
viewed in a global context (Inalcık, 1954a and b, 1960a and b). State making
and trade also form the principal concerns of the 1973 volume. Here a brief
treatment of political history is joined to a second, much more innovative
section on the operation of Ottoman government. Institutions and their
personnel, such as the dynasty, the Palace, or the timar holders occupy
centre-stage. But more abstract ideas are also allotted considerable attention,
particularly the differentiation between state servitors and tax-paying sub-
jects, often known as the Ottoman class system.
A third section highlights international trade, including the attempts
by Mehmed the Conqueror to turn Bursa into a spice entrepôt. Competi-
tion between the Ottoman Empire and the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean
is linked to this concern with trade. By emphasising the success of Muslim
merchants during the early centuries of the empire, Inalcık implicitly rejects
the old view that in the Ottoman Empire, the division of labour was more or
less immutable, being based on religious and ethnic criteria. Views of this
kind had frequently been found in works dealing with the nineteenth
century (for an example see Issawi, 1966, p. 114). By contrast, Inalcık
demonstrates that the division of labour was historically determined and
could therefore change. This point has an important place in the argumenta-
tion of those historians who wish to show that Ottoman history has its own
economic dynamic, and is not based on some supposedly immutable
priciples of religiously based social organisation.
188 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
author stressed the relative distance of the state from all social forces, a
concept which was to play a significant role in discussions down to the
present day (for recent examples, see Haldon, 1992 and 1993). Further
chapters were devoted to the Ottoman ruling group, problems connected
with taxation and socio-political tensions within the system. These latter
conflicts conditioned the manner in which European trade and imperialism
came to reshape the Ottoman economy.
The European impact upon the eastern Mediterranean scene con-
stitutes the topic of the second volume. This begins by confronting ‘Euro-
pean feudalism’ and ‘Eastern despotism’. In concrete terms, this section deals
with the Ottoman conquest of Egypt (1517) and the sixteenth-century
conflict with the naval powers of early modern Europe. Further sections
cover the impact of mercantilism, the importation of bullion, the monetary
crisis of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the changes in the
established class structure resulting from all these developments. A final
section treats the early stages of direct Ottoman confrontation with Euro-
pean imperialism, which the author places in the years around 1800.
Berkes’ books were veritable pioneers at the time they were writ-
ten, but of course they could only relay what was known in the 1960s. Thus
we do not find very much information on the concrete activities of Otto-
man peasants, sailors, caravan merchants and owners of capital. On the
whole the Ottoman Empire is viewed in its confrontation with Europe,
which constitutes an important aspect of Ottoman history, but by no means
the total story. As a result of his limited perspective, Berkes’ books have not
aged well, and this explains why before 1988, the series editors commis-
sioned a new volume on ‘Ottoman economic history, 1500–1914’. The
author was ޸evket Pamuk, who had worked on cotton and the European
world economy and was later to focus on monetary history (Pamuk, 1987,
1994). As a significant change in format, the book now contained a reading
list with titles in Turkish and English. While themes such as ‘state and
society’ continued to be central issues, Pamuk highlighted the course of time
more strongly than Berkes had done. Even the chapter headings each
contained a reference to the century treated in the relevant text.
The introduction of Pamuk’s work deals with the period down to
the fifteenth century; the emergence of the Ottoman state is discussed in
connection with the basic problem of ‘situating’ Ottoman history in the
context of world history. To Pamuk, this undertaking necessitates a dis-
cussion of ‘modes of production’ as a concept of Marxian political economy.
The feudal mode of production, a category derived from mediaeval Euro-
pean socio-political relations, is contrasted with the Asiatic Mode of Pro-
190 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
from 1850 to 1880 and a second one on the years from 1880 to the
beginning of World War I. For the years preceding 1850, when statistical
data are at a premium, Egypt, the Syrian provinces and Iraq are accorded
subsections in a common chapter. Notable is the emphasis placed on Iraq, a
province which in most discussions of Ottoman history, has been grievously
neglected. Working from materials in European archives, Owen’s focus is
on the region’s incorporation into the European-dominated world econ-
omy, with a special emphasis on financial control. The Ottoman and
Egyptian bankruptcies, with the foreign control they occasioned, form
pivotal points in Owen’s account.
Balkan historians have also paid their tribute to economic history,
and a notable example is the comprehensive work by John R. Lampe and
Marvin R. Jackson (Lampe and Jackson, 1982). For our purposes, the first
150 pages authored by Lampe are directly relevant, although the later
sections, concerning the economies of the newly independent Balkan
states, also contain some relevant information. The authors insist on the
geographic unity of the Balkans, which they do not regard as a Mediterra-
nean entity (as had been done by Braudel, 1966, vol.I., pp. 22–93).
Rather the geographical unity of southeastern Europe is assured by moun-
tain ranges and above all, the Danube. Viewing the Danube as a unifying
factor is due to the nineteenth-century focus of the book; in earlier per-
iods, there was no through traffic on this river (McGowan, 1987). The
geographical unity of southeastern Europe provides the justification for a
comparative study of Balkan economies in the pre-independence period.
From the vantage point of an economic historian, the Ottoman and Hab-
sburg régimes are compared in a manner reminiscent of Barbara Jelavich’s
1983 study. As the two books were written at the same time, this similar-
ity of approach may be ascribed to the ‘temper of the times’. Moreover,
the willingness of the two authors to acknowledge the ‘more complex and
commercial nature’ of the Ottoman Empire, can be ascribed to an at least
indirect acquaintance with the more recent findings of Ottomanist histor-
ians (Lampe and Jackson, 1982, p.9).
after the end of World War II, forced them to share power with a second,
and this time Muslim, bourgeoisie.
Keyder’s work attempts to combine history with political economy
and sociology, and thus constitutes quite a challenge to the routines of the
Ottomanist historical profession. However during the 1980s, ‘straight’ his-
torians also attempted syntheses of their own. In 1989–90, there appeared
the first printing of a multi-volume history of Turkey in Turkish, edited by
Sina Akşin and authored by a sizeable group of scholars. The first volume is
concerned with the Turks prior to the Ottoman Empire, and contains a long
article by Halil Berktay on historiography. Ümit Hassan has authored a
‘chronology of political events’ and Ayla Ödekan an overview over the
visual arts. Ödekan’s contributions are prominent in later volumes as well.
This strong emphasis on historiography and the fine arts shows the authors’
wish to move away from the standard format of ‘pure’ political history.
The second volume covers the ‘classical period’ of Ottoman history
from 1300 to 1600. In the third volume, dealing with the period from 1600
to 1908, we encounter a lengthy piece, authored by the editor himself, on
nineteenth-century political thinking. By far the most voluminous of the
series, the fourth volume deals with the collapse of the empire, and the
entire history of the republic, not excluding the coup d’état of 1980. A new
printing (1995) contains chapters on economic history in volumes II and III,
which had previously been missing, and most importantly, a fifth volume
devoted entirely to contemporary history. As a novel departure, this series
was not sponsored by the Turkish Historical Commission or one of the
universities, as had been customary through the 1970s. Put out by a private
publisher, these volumes should be regarded as an explicitly non-govern-
mental venture.
1966, 1979). Thus in the first version of his work on the Mediterranean, this
leading historian asked questions about Ottoman population and trade,
which Ömer Lütfi Barkan, in his work published during the 1950s and
1960s, attempted to answer (Braudel, 1949). In Braudel’s later study of
economic life in the entire northern hemisphere, Istanbul, Aleppo and the
trade routes passing through the Ottoman Empire are also given consider-
able attention. Here the author links the Ottoman state’s continued control
of these routes to its ability to defend itself against European ‘incorporation’,
down to the beginning of the nineteenth century (Braudel, 1979, vol. III,
pp. 410–15).
Needless to say, since Braudel’s work on world history ended in the
late 1970s, it cannot reflect current scholarship. Present-day ‘culturalists’
from the late 1970s onward (compare Hess, 1978) have been critical of
Braudel’s assumptions concerning a supposed unity of the Mediterranean,
emphasising instead the politico-cultural split between the Christian and
Islamic worlds. Generally speaking, ten to twenty years after his death, the
reputation of a major writer or scholar is often at a low ebb; he is no longer a
producing member of the literary or scholarly community, and has not been
dead long enough to be considered a classic. In any instance, Braudel has
made a contribution to Ottoman history over and above the relatively
limited number of pages he has specifically devoted to the subject, for he has
been instrumental in introducing the study of Ottoman history as a subject
to economic historians in general.
Perry Anderson’s Lineages of the Absolutist State constitutes another
important book by a non-Ottomanist which attempts to include Ottoman
history (Anderson, 1979). By its wide influence, it has contributed substan-
tially toward making our field better known. Anderson is concerned with
the different developments which led to royal absolutism in early modern
Europe, or in a few rare cases, prevented its emergence. In the section
dealing with the Ottoman Empire, he has marshalled a number of convin-
cing arguments against the concept of the ‘Asiatic Mode of Production’. But
when Anderson discusses the Ottoman Empire in detail, this concept
manages to creep in by the back door. This, in the opinion of the present
author, is at least partly due to Anderson’s insistence on making the rule of
Ottoman Sultans appear fundamentally different from European absolutism.
But given recent research on Ottoman ‘magnates’, the difference between
the two systems, while significant, does appear much less cogent than it did
in the 1950s or 1960s. Anderson, quite against his own intentions, finds
himself perpetuating the old story of the ‘peculiarity’ of the ‘immutable
Orient’ (Abou-El-Haj, 1991, pp. 3–5).
OTT OM A N E M P IR E T HR OU GH G E NE RAL HI ST O RIES 195
FR OM 19 8 9 TO T H E P RE S EN T DA Y: G EN ERA L
HIS TOR IE S
A recent attempt at synthesising Ottoman history has recently been
undertaken by Halil Inalcık with Donald Quataert. These two authors have
edited, and largely written, a 1,100 page volume on the economic and social
history of the Ottoman Empire (Inalcık with Quataert eds., 1994, paperback
version in two volumes, 1997)6. To this volume, Inalcık has contributed an
long account of developments down to the end of the sixteenth century,
which in the paperback version, constitutes the first volume. The discussion
of the nineteenth century is due to Donald Quataert, who, during the
period in which this book was put together, has also produced an important
monograph on manufacturing in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire
6
Page numbers are given according to the one-volume edition.
196 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
EA RL Y OT TOM AN HIS TO RY I N T H E 1 99 0s
Recent years have witnessed a continuing interest in the early
centuries of the Ottoman Empire’s existence. Colin Imber has produced an
OTT OM A N E M P IR E T HR OU GH G E NE RAL HI ST O RIES 199
A C ONT INU I NG EF F OR T A T S YN T HE S I S:
TH E ‘OTT OM AN LE GA C Y ’ A S A R E SE AR CH
PRO BLEM
The brief overview presented here is not complete by any means. If
during the coming years, as many books on ‘large chunks’ of Ottoman
history continue to be published as we have seen recently, it will be out of
date very soon. Among the different viewpoints represented in this litera-
ture, we can pick up one feature common to many recent works, namely the
debate on the legacy of the Ottoman empire to its successors9. However, it
has recently been pointed out that, Turkey apart, much of this legacy exists
in the realm of perception, rather than in that of ‘objective realities’ (Lory,
1985; Todorova, 1996). For if we ignore the (very important) sector of daily
routines and the words associated with them, most Balkan states shortly after
autonomy/independence tried very hard to get rid of all practices perceived
as ‘oriental’. By contrast, the lines of continuity linking the Turkish bureau-
cracy of republican times with the nineteenth-century Ottoman past have
recently been shown up in a perceptive text by Ilber Ortaylı (Ortaylı, in
Ihsanoğ˘lu ed., 1994).
When considering the Ottoman legacy, another important realm of
debate is the role of the Greek Orthodox church, which, in its sixteenth- or
even early nineteenth-century shape, was an Ottoman institution as much
as anything else. In the context of nation-building, the role of this
‘ottomanised’ church hierarchy has been evaluated in contrary fashions by
Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbs. But on other aspects of the ‘Ottoman legacy’,
at least certain Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian and Turkish scholars have been
able to find a certain amount of common ground. At least some debates now
take place on some issues without the participants being necessarily aligned
9 Compare among others Lampe and Jackson (1982), Jelavich (1983), Todorova (1996).
On the problem of the Ottoman legacy in general, see particularly the volume edited by L. Carl
Brown, of which Todorova’s article forms a part (Brown, 1996; Todorova, 1996). Together with
Cyril Black, Brown has also edited a volume on modernisation in the (former) Ottoman Empire,
another example of what might be called ’post-Ottoman comparative studies’ (Brown and Black eds.,
1992). For a further example compare Barkey and Von Hagen (1997).
OTT OM A N E M P IR E T HR OU GH G E NE RAL HI ST O RIES 201
SU GG E ST ED RE AD INGS
Castellan Georges (1991). Histoire des Balkans (Paris: Fayard) (evenemential history,
with occasional tendencies toward the chronique scandaleuse).
Hösch, Edgar (3rd edn 1995). Geschichte der Balkanländer von der Frühzeit bis zur
Gegenwart (Munich: C.H. Beck) (the Austrian impact upon the Balkans,
particularly in the nineteenth century).
Lewis, Geoffrey (3rd edn, 1965). Turkey (London: Ernest Benn Ltd.) (general book
on modern Turkey, with brief historical introduction).
Mantran, Robert (ed.) (1989). Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman (Paris: Fayard) (good
overall narrative treatment; the section on the Arab provinces highly recom-
mended).
Matuz, Josef (1985). Das Osmanische Reich, Grundlinien seiner Geschichte (Darmstadt/
Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft) (by a specialist on diplomatics;
emphasis on German involvement in the late Ottoman Empire).
Werner, Ernst (3rd edn 1978). Die Geburt einer Grossmacht – die Osmanen
(1300–1481) (Berlin-East: Akademie Verlag) (by a scholarly East German
Marxist, one of the first to point out that a drive for booty and ideological
motives can coexist in the same person).
8
CONC LUSI ON
FU R TH E R DE S ID E RA TA
Obviously the discussion of sources, both primary and secondary, as
attempted in the present volume does not nearly exhaust our subject. Some
readers will regret that miniatures, mosques, palaces and photographs have
not been discussed, and it is true that this type of source has been gaining in
importance with every passing year. During the last two decades or so, many
historians of Ottoman art have given up the purely descriptive approach
favoured in the 1960s or 1970s. Architectural historians have also abandoned
the exclusive concern with building structure typical of that time.
At present, quite a few researchers dealing with Ottoman images try
to place the objects studied in a context, either political or social. Such an
interest encourages forays into the territory otherwise occupied by histor-
ians. To mention but one example, the Ottoman dynasty, with no links to
the prestigious rulers of the early caliphate or the mediaeval Middle East,
attempted to legitimise itself by sumptuous public building: this phenom-
enon is of obvious interest to both political and art historians. Or else
miniatures, fayence or carpets constitute luxury goods as well as works of art.
Here the interest that ‘straight’ historians have recently been taking in
consumption has tended to bring art historians into contact with their
colleagues from neighbouring disciplines.
In a different vein, the critical attitude of post-colonial historians
toward the creation of myths and images has made Ottomanists aware of
the fact that no less than written sources, images must be carefully ana-
lysed before they can be put to use. In consequence, critical studies of
image making, especially of photography, have become quite frequent
(for a good example, see Beauge, Çizgen, [1992]). Unfortunately, an even
cursory discussion of the questions raised by these new studies would have
204
CON CL U S ION 205
1 The Head Gardener also was in charge of Palace security, and executions on the Palace grounds figured
among his duties.
206 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
reader that only the first volume of Evliya’s travelogue, along with selections
from later volumes, has been edited in a satisfactory fashion (see chapter 5).
Where the last fifty years of the Ottoman Empire are concerned, much
source material is still in the possession of private persons, now more
inclined to share letters and personal memories with the reading public than
in the past. Authors both well known and obscure have produced family
histories delving deep into the Ottoman past (for a recent example, see
Devrim, 1994). Even greater are the masses of archival material; given its
enormous bulk, most of it will doubtlessly remain unpublished. Yet future
researchers will appreciate the work of document publication which has
become so much more intensive during the last few years, with the Prime
Minister’s Archives, and, more recently, the Istanbul City Administration
funding many of the projects (see chapter 2).
But no book can inform the researcher of all the things he/she is
likely to find. In the course of his/her work, many a historian will discover
groups of documents or narrative texts providing answers to questions
uniquely his/her own. These may well become the speciality of the author
in question. Thus the tax registers (tahrir) are associated with the names of
Ömer Lütfi Barkan and Halil Inalcık. Ronald Jennings devoted his life to the
study of Anatolian kadi registers, while Roderic Davison excelled in ingeni-
ous comparisons between nineteenth-century Ottoman and European
sources. Many scholars will develop their problématiques in close conjunction
with the sources about which they know most, and this intimate knowledge
allows them to produce more sophisticated studies. But at the same time,
this proceeding may result in ‘blinkers’, namely when specialists come to
assume that certain problems are not worth treating because the sources they
know best do not cover them. It is therefore good practice to change one’s
archive from time to time.
However it must be admitted that like any other corpus of sources,
Ottoman records do have their gaps. Most Ottoman subjects were peasants
or nomads, who being mostly illiterate, have left few direct testimonies. As
previous discussion has shown (chapter 4), this means that our records
concerning the overwhelming majority of the Ottoman population were
written by outsiders, whose main aim, moreover, was the collection of
taxes. That such people were not always given truthful information should
be obvious. But even where non-elite urban society is concerned, we very
rarely possess direct testimonies. More often than not, we use records set up
by court scribes, who employed sets of standardised formulas, in order to
find out something about the social organisation of even Istanbul or Bursa
guildsmen, to say nothing about the inhabitants of more remote places. And
CON CL U S ION 207
blissfully unaware of the fact. An extreme case is the writer and scholar
Charles Doughty, who travelled the Syrian hajj route before 1888
(Doughty, 4th edn, 1979). Differently from most other foreign travellers,
this explorer did learn Arabic and form close relationships with a few men he
encountered in the Arabian oases. But from his friends, Doughty expected
extremely difficult and dangerous things, without ever asking himself why
these persons should take such risks on his behalf. Yet this was an excellent
observer with considerable artistic talent, who spent a lengthy period in his
chosen region. One can only imagine the troubles which less accomplished
travellers must have caused to their interlocutors.
Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that many aspects of
the world inhabited by the subjects of the Ottoman Sultan remain closed to
us. How one confronts this situation is of course a personal matter; quite a
few researchers have confessed to being very frustrated in the face of
numerous unanswered queries. In my own experience, reading widely in
European and/or Asian history is a good way of opening up new vistas and
discovering new problems to investigate. Doubtlessly we only find answers
to our questions by closely analysing primary sources; but novel questions
are frequently developed by pondering historiographies concerning India,
China or early modern Europe.
3 We have however noted that when Evliya travelled in the world of the infidels, he shared this
perception.
210 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
ly the former students of Halil Inalcık from his Chicago days, both Turks
and Americans, continue to have a major impact on the present state of our
field. But the most active role in this respect fell to the doyen of present-day
Ottomanist historians himself: for over a decade, Halil Inalcık constituted a
major presence on the American scholarly scene.
In the 1960s, the sympathies of non-Turkish, especially American,
Ottomanists for the Turkish national project did not imply taking sides in
the contemporary politics of that country. For at the time, all parties active
on the Turkish scene, from extreme right to extreme left, ardently espoused
the national project, and foreign scholars generally followed the same
pattern. But the resurgence of Armenian demands in the 1970s, and the
terrorism that accompanied it, acted as a divisive factor, encouraging reac-
tions of ‘standing up and being counted’ among American Ottomanists.
Some of the latter have shown rather obvious allegiance to Turkish official
positions. A further parting of the ways can be observed from about 1980
onward, with an islamist party becoming a major force in Turkey. Now
allegiance of foreign Ottomanists to the Turkish national republican project
generally implies an espousal of secularist values, those whose sympathies are
closer to the islamist side forming a distinct minority.
A further complication stems from the fact that many European
scholars, and to a perhaps lesser degree, Americans as well, have developed
considerable doubts about the validity of the national project in their own
countries. To put it differently, for a scholar concerned about the violations
of human rights suffered by foreigners in the European Community, it is not
possible to support wholeheartedly nationalist views in any part of the globe.
We thus are confronted with a somewhat paradoxical situation. A European
conservative, who normally assumes that people outside of western Euro-
pean culture should not be full members of the local community in Ham-
burg or Marseilles, may not have any qualms about supporting Turkish
nationalist views with all their present-day implications. A liberal (in the
broad sense of the word), who will espouse the right of Turkish or North
African minorities to form part of the European scene, may well find the
opinions of the small group of intellectual Turkish dissidents much more
appealing (as an example, see the writings of Murat Belge, especially Belge,
n.d.).
When writing about the origins of the Ottoman Empire or the story
of Istanbul photography, these isues may be pushed into the background,
but they are never eliminated entirely. Yet differently from what may be
true of other fields, we cannot make out a clear dividing line between
Turkish and non-Turkish Ottomanist historiography. In my view, it would
CON CL U S ION 211
TH E EI G H TE E NT H C E NT UR Y AS A P OTE NT I AL
‘GR OWT H A RE A ’
But to an early modernist, the real challenge comes from the
archival sources concerning the eighteenth century. This is the great terra
incognita, particularly for Anatolia, but also for Istanbul, and to a much lesser
degree, the Balkans and the Arab provinces. Thirty to forty years ago, few
people would have accepted that archival research into this period was
urgently needed. After all, the second volume of Gibb and Bowen’s com-
prehensive work had recently come out, and was only very marginally based
on unpublished archive materials (Gibb and Bowen, 1957). To most schol-
ars subscribing to the ‘decline’ paradigm, it seemed much more relevant and
also more gratifying to study the Ottoman ‘golden age’ of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. Or else researchers preferred the pre-history of the
Turkish national state, namely the post-Tanzimat years. This lack of interest
among historians also explains why archivists, who do not operate in a
vacuum, did not feel especially motivated to catalogue eighteenth-century
materials.
However, during the last twenty years or so, the outlook of many
scholars has changed. It was first understood that eighteenth-century records
had potential significance for the economic historian, after Mehmet Genç
had discovered the workings of the life-time tax farm (Genç, 1975). By
demonstrating that the down payments by newly entering tax farmers
reflected market trends, Genç opened the way to an albeit limited quantitat-
ive analysis of the Ottoman internal market. Moreover Genç, Fukazawa,
Raymond and Panzac have all shown that in spite of demographic crises in
certain parts of the Balkans, other sectors of the Ottoman economy con-
tinued to thrive and expand sometimes well into the 1760s (Fukazawa,
1987; Raymond, 1973–74; Panzac, 1982). Admittedly this relatively opti-
mistic view of the eighteenth century’s first sixty years is not shared by all
specialists (McGowan, 1994). But it is an encouraging development that at
least some Ottomanist historians no longer regard the eighteenth century as
a period of unmitigated economic decline.
Moreover, now that ‘privatisation’ has become the watchword of
politicians and economists, the reputation of tax farmers, less than savoury
ever since the French Revolution, also has tended to improve. A recent
study has stressed the possibilities of long-term tax-farming contracts in
binding eighteenth-century provincial elites to the centre. As the latters’
material well-being depended on their share in the Ottoman financial
enterprise, these notables saw no reason to break away from the Empire
(Salzmann, 1993). Moreover tax-farming also constitutes a subject of inter-
214 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
DE MY S TIFY ING C EN TR AL I SM
In conjunction with eighteenth-century studies, some historians
have begun to question the assumption, totally unchallenged until very
recently, that state centralisation is at all times a hallmark of political
development. Notions of linear progress have been abandoned in most fields
of history. But strangely enough, it has taken time for this trend to be fully
accepted by some political scientists. However, in recent years, federative
structures developing in the European Community, where a decentralising
as well as a centralising component is very much in evidence, seem to have
made an impression on students of politics. More scholars are now willing to
accept that decentralised structures may have their legitimate place in
political life. As a corollary some historical sociologists will admit that
centralisation has its costs, for instance in terms of rising political violence
and sharply increased taxation. We have encountered Charles Tilly, one of
the ‘grand old men’ of current historical sociology (see chapter 1), whose
work on early modern France stresses exactly these aspects (Tilly, 1985).
More recently the topic of decentralisation has been taken up by
Ottomanists as well, but with a characteristic difference; demystifying Louis
XIV still seems psychologically easier than doing the same to Süleyman the
Lawgiver or Mehmed the Conqueror (on Louis XIV, see Burke, 1992).
Thus Karen Barkey has argued in favour of a sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century central government incorporating rebels into the governmental
structure (Barkey, 1994). This policy enabled the Ottoman central adminis-
tration to maintain itself while using force only to a limited extent, much less
than was current in, for instance, seventeenth-century France. Attempted
integration on the part of the central power may be regarded as a concession
to separate political authorities emerging in the Ottoman provinces, as
CON CL U S ION 215
ON T HE VIR TU E S O F C OM PA RI S ON
In the arguments outlined above, we find a good deal of implicit
and explicit historical comparison. History has not gone as far as literary
studies, where comparison has become the key to theoretical thinking on
the phenomenon of literature itself. But even so, certain well-studied
historical processes outside of the Ottoman world have come to inspire
Ottomanist historians. This applies, for instance, to the post-Roman, ‘Dark
Age’ phenomena of migration and state formation, which the recent coop-
eration between social anthropologists, archaeologists and historians have
216 APP R OAC HI N G OTT OM AN H I S TORY
4
Turkish historians have rarely considered these features as being of major importance.
CON CL U S ION 217
dynamics typical of the Ottoman realm (Togan, 1992). Yet it would seem
that some of the categories used by Chinese historians, but virtually un-
known to the practitioners of our discipline, such as inclusiveness (of
outsiders) versus exclusiveness, should be taken into consideration by Ot-
tomanist historians as well (for an attempt in this direction, see Barkey,
1994). Certain thorny topics in Ottoman history, such as the military
rebellions of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, will probably
benefit from study within a comparative perspective (Faroqhi, 1995; for a
broadly-based study of revolution and rebellion, including France, China
and the Ottoman Empire, see Goldstone, 1991).
A further topic worth pursuing is the comparative study of Russian
and Ottoman histories. As a result of the Cold War, very few Ottomanists
have ever worked on the rich materials relevant to our discipline found in
the Russian archives. Russian historians of the Ottoman Empire also have
been denied access to the sources available in Turkey. As a result, few
Ottomanist historians have been motivated to learn Russian, so that even
now, with opportunities for cooperation increasing, it will take time before
they can be pursued. On the other hand, Ottoman-Russian history poten-
tially is a rich field, not only because of the – largely conflictual – common
history of the two empires between the late seventeenth and the twentieth
century. For even a casual observer will note certain parallels in socio-
political organisation, such as the strong position of the ruler, the parallel
roles of strelitzi and janissaries, and particularly, the numerous features
shared by Ottoman timar holders and the so-called middle service class of
seventeenth-century Czarist Russia (Hellie, 1971). At the same time, there
also existed marked contrasts between the two societies. Thus peasant
dependence was, for the most part, much more extreme in Russia than in
the Ottoman Empire.
It is possible to go on at length in this vein. Sketching future
research is not really very difficult – the problems only emerge when one
actually sets to work. But at least to me, Ottoman history has provided the
occasion for many a fascinating quest.
SU GG E ST ED RE AD ING
Berktay, Halil (1991).‘Der Aufstieg und die gegenwärtige Krise der nationalisti-
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though published in a small journal, and in German to boot).
Davison, Roderic H. (1990). Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, 1774–1923,
CON CL U S ION 221
The Impact of the West (Austin: University of Texas Press) (collected articles by a
connoisseur of the Tanzimat period).
Esenbel, Selçuk (1994). ‘The Anguish of Civilised Behaviour: The Use of Western
Cultural Forms in the Everyday Lives of The Meiji Japanese and the Ottoman
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Finn, Robert P. (1984). The Early Turkish Novel, 1872–1900 (Istanbul) ISIS:
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Kaser, Karl (1990). Südosteuropäische Geschichte und Geschichtswissenschaft, eine Ein-
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Mardin, Şerif (1962). The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, A Study in the
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Moran, Berna (1983–1994). Türk Romanına Eleştirel bir Bakış, 3 vols. Istanbul:
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INDEX
251
252 IND EX
Takvim-i vekayi (Ottoman paper) 168 travel accounts 22, 119, 142, 149
Ta’lı̂kı̂zâde 150 as a means of symbolically appropriating the
Talmud-Thora schools 138 world 111, 131, 132
Tanzimat 20, 51, 52, 71, 78, 157, 158, 164, conveying stereotypes 115, 133
178–182, 186, 197, 205, 213, 219 meant to incite emulation 132, 208
tapu register 86 travellers 15, 16, 110, 111, 141
tarikat 34 European 110–112, 118, 128, 130, 1’31, 141
Taşköprüzade 162 travelogue(s) 15, 111, 140, 141, 160, 208
Tavernier, Jean Baptiste 15, 16, 127, 133–135 travel writing, for scholarly purposes 122, 126
tax farmers 82, 103, 142, 151 treaties, of Algerian powerholders with European
tax-farming 19, 98, 214 sovereigns 116
integration of provincial elites through 213 tree ring(s) 83, 85, 86
tax house 94 Tripolitsa 185
tax registers see tahrir tuğra 70
taxes 92, 201 Tunis 62
paid by peasants 82 Tunisia 78
taxpayers 88, 89, 91, 93, 94, 214 Turkey, Turkish, Turks 7, 9, 11, 14, 17, 27,
Tekin, Gönül Alpay 33 28, 31, 34, 43, 46, 50, 55, 58, 70, 78, 106,
Tekin, şinasi 32, 33 123, 139, 152, 164, 168, 175, 179, 180,
tekke(s) 58 181, 185, 190, 192, 193, 200, 207, 209,
Temimi Foundation (Zaghouan) 43 210
Temeşvar 59 Turkish Studies Association 42
Temettuât Defterleri 52, 97 Türk Tarih Kurumu 43
tension, sectarian, in Beirut 137 Türkiye Ekonomik ve Sosyal Tarih Vakfı 47
Teply, Karl 33
tereke 56 Ufki, Ali 154, 207
Thévenot, Jean 122 ulema 34, 36, 153, 160, 177
Thomas, Lewis 154 uniqueness, of ’national essence’ 14
Thrace 183 uniqueness of Ottoman history 190
Tietze, Andreas 33, 120 United States 42
Tilly, Charles 13, 214 urban autonomy, limited historical significance
timar 86, 92, 98, 110, 151 even in the European context 216
timar-holder(s) 89, 95, 187, 220 urban renewal, role of Ottoman state in 139,
Tirana 76 142
tithe: see öür Urfa 135
Todorova, Maria 200, 201 Uzunçarşılı Ismail Hakk 70, 71, 176, 177
Topkapı Palace 47, 49, 53 Ünver, Süheyl 70
Topkapı Sarayı 53, 131 Üsküp/Skopje 41, 166
Topkapı Sarayı Archive 54
toponymy, Anatolian 100 vakfıye 54, 74
Toulon 61 vakıf 34, 53, 55, 61, 88, 96, 129, 139, 198
Tournefort, Joseph Pitton de 16 vakıf accounts 96
town(s) 128, 130, 132, 134, 135, 201, 202, Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü (Ankara) 55, 96
208 Vakit (newspaper) 166
Anatolian 133 Valona 76
Trabzon 100, 101, 129 vassal principalities 86
traces, of statements, edited out of a text 147 Vatin, Nicolas 199
trade 187, 189, 196 venality of office 149
trade routes 194 Venice, Venetian 8, 60, 61, 66, 69, 110, 114,
Ottoman control of 194 115, 117, 118, 120
trade Verroia 77
internal, misconceptions about 142 viceroys, Spanish 68
long distance 134, 135 Vidin 59
transition, Byzantino-Ottoman 7, 100, 187 Vienna 33, 69, 126, 128, 132, 133, 155, 160
‘transition studies’ 8 vilayet 88
transliteration 31, 38 Vilayet Ahkâm Defterleri 51
Transylvania 73, 86 village mosques 83, 96
262 IND EX
village(s) 11, 83, 87, 88, 89, 92, 95, 96, 100, Yahşi Fakih 145
102, 106, 107 yaya 88
village monograph 106 Yazır, Mahmud 72
Vries, Jan de 105 Yemen 8, 155, 163
Vryonis, Spyros 184, 186, 187 Yérasimos, Stéphane 111, 112, 134,
146
wages, at subsistence level 105 Yıldız Archives 53, 212
Wallachia 73, 86 Yıldız Esas Evrakı 53
Wallerstein, Immanuel 17, 18, 192 Yıldız Maruzat Defterleri 53
war economy, Ottoman-style 188 Young Turks 20
watermarks 70, 74 Yugoslavia 14
Weber, Max 178, 216 yürük 21, 90, 100, 101, 107, 161, 183,
White, Hayden 171 188, 192, 199, 206
widow: see bive
Wild, Hans 117 Zachariadou, Elizabeth 8
Wittek, Paul 154, 199 Zadar 69, 79
women 57, 94, 144, 169 al-Za hiriyya, Damascus 61
women’s history 3, 207 ˙
Zajaczkowski, Ananiasz 73
women’s studies 40 zaptiye 66
working class, Ottoman 137 zaviye(s) 58
world economy 189 zeamet 86
world systems 17, 18 Zonguldak 137